24 Feb WHY THE GLEE IN MURDERING A JEWISH CHILD? WHAT ANTI-SEMITISM TEACHES US ABOUT JEWS

Money
Two Jews, Yankel
and Shmerel, were
walking past a
church. A sign on the
church read
“$20,000 to all who
convert today!” Both
were out of work and had been for quite some
time.
Shmerel said, “Yankel, I’m going to do it. The
kids need food.”
“Shmerel, don’t!”
“I’ve got to, my family needs the money,”
said Shmerel, and he walked into the church.
Yankel waited outside. Shmerel came out a
half-hour later.
“So,” said Yankel, “did you get the $20,000?”
Shmerel looked at Yankel with disgust and
said, “You people are all alike. All you think
about is money.”
Why Kill Everyone?
Why did Haman, the Persian Prime Minister,
want to annihilate all of the Jews? The book
of Esther tells the story:
“All the king’s servants at the king’s gate
kneeled and bowed before Haman, for so had
the king commanded concerning him. But
Mordechai would not kneel or bow.
“The king’s servants at the king’s gate said to
Mordechai, ‘Why do you transgress the
King’s command?’ Finally, when they had
said this to him day after day and he did not
listen to them, they informed Haman to see if
Mordechai’s words would endure, for he had
told them that he [would never bow because
he] was a Jew.
“When Haman saw that Mordechai would not
kneel or bow before him, Haman was filled
with wrath. He thought it contemptible to kill
only Mordechai, for they had informed him of
Mordechai’s nation. Haman sought to
annihilate all the Jews, the nation of
Mordechai, throughout Achashveirosh’s
entire kingdom.”
Yet the logic seems flawed: Why did Haman
want to murder Moredechai’s entire nation? If
Mordechai was not bowing down to Haman,
he should have plotted to kill Mordechai
himself, or at most his colleagues, the spiritual
leaders of the Jews. But why did Haman feel
the urge to murder every single Jew in the 127
provinces of the Persian Empire just because
one person, Mordechai, did not bow to him?
What is more: Many Jews who passed by
Haman did indeed bow down to him.
Thousands of Persian Jews were assimilated
and did not second guess the King’s
instruction to kneel to Haman. Mordechai
was the exception. Why, then, did Haman

crave revenge from every single Jew?
The Story of a Nation
The answer to this lay in the words of the
Megillah: “But he [Haman] thought it
contemptible to kill only Mordechai, for they
had informed him of Mordechai’s nation.
Haman sought to annihilate all the Jews, the
nation of Mordechai.”
What do these words—“they had informed
him of Mordechai’s nation”—mean? What
exactly did they inform him about
Mordechai’s nation? The issue here was that
Mordechai himself was not bowing down to
Haman; this outraged Haman. What does it
have to do with Mordechai’s nation, some of
them who were actually kneeling to Haman?
Yet it is these words which capture the core of
the story. Haman felt that Mordechai’s
opposition to him was not personal. It was not
that Mordechai was too arrogant, too
religious, or too intelligent to bow down to
Haman. It is not that Mordechai’s towering
personality or profound spirituality was
causing him to shun Haman’s pompousness.
If that would have been the case, Haman
would have had Mordechai executed and life
would move on. Rather, Haman sensed that
Mordechai’s obstinacy was the result of him
being part of a certain people, a specific,
peculiar nation. Mordechai was a product of
an entire nation, “the nation of Mordechai.”
There was something about the entire Jewish
nation which would not allow them to bow
down to Haman.
And even when Haman saw that some Jews
were bowing down to him, he felt that their
prostration to him was disingenuous; these
Jews were double-faced. The Jew, in Haman’s
eyes, was “hopeless;” there was nothing to be
done with the Jew. No amount of education or
enlightenment could solve the “Jewish
problem.” No amount of integration and
assimilation could eliminate the stubborn
quality of the Jew. Mordechai was not a
lonely idealist; he was merely expressing
publicly the true innate nature of every single
Jew, man, woman and child, who will never
bow down to Haman for real.
Why, then, did some Jews bow down to him?
To Haman that was a question or a revelation
of their dishonesty. But it would not make
him change his position on what a Jew is.
Haman believed that the Jew, in his or her
most inner being, could never truly accept
Haman the Barbarian as his master and god.
Why? Because since Sinai, every Jewish soul,
at its deepest core, experienced the presence
of a living, moral G-d. And if G-d exists,
moral law exists and there are limits to power
and barbarism. (“I hate the Jews,” Hitler said,
“because they invented the conscience.”)
Haman, the ultimate arrogant barbarian power
freak, knew that the presence of even a single

Jew would paralyze his objectives.
Assimilation Does not Matter
This also explains why Mordechai kept on
provoking Haman by refusing to bow down to
him. Why couldn’t Mordechai simply
“disappear” when Haman was passing by?
Why the need to continuously drive Haman
mad and evoke his ire?
But Mordechai understood that for Haman,
just as for all the Haman’s of history, it makes
absolutely no difference if you bow down or
you don’t. They will despise you regardless.
Their hate to you stems from your very
essence, not from your behavior. You may
stand on your head all day in front of Haman,
it will mean nothing. The problem is not what
you are doing, but who you are.
Haman will look for the convenient excuse by
accusing Mordechai of treason; but this is
only a front to the true motive of his hatred—
Haman sees in every Jew the ultimate enemy
to his unbridled power and arrogance. To hide
one’s identity in the hope of assuaging
Haman’s hatred is futile. For even in the face
of the tiny Jewish infant Haman saw the face
of a living moral G-d. Destroying that face
would equal, in Haman’s eyes, the destruction
of G-d.
Gassing the Infant
We have seen in our own times how true this
is. The most sophisticated, assimilated
German Jew, who was more German than the
Germans, who had Goethe and Schiller
flowing from his lips, who was married to a
blond blue-eyed Aryan woman, who knew
every symphony of Mozart and Wagner, who
was an avid student of Nietzsche and
Schopenhauer—this Jew was sent to the
Treblinka and Dachau gas chambers with the

same glee as the OustJude—the ultra-
religious Chassidic Jew of the East, immersed

day and night in the study of the our sacred
texts and complete Jewish observance.
How can we understand this? The smallest,
cutest, most adorable Jewish baby, incapable
of harming a soul, incapable of harboring any
political, territorial, religious or scientific
positions, was clubbed to death with the same
passion and brutality as the most productive,
accomplished, learned, and respected Rebbe?
It is because Hitler saw every single Jew as
part of “Am Mordechai,” the people of
Mordechai. You may be bowing down to the
founding fathers of German culture and
philosophy, you may be kneeling to superstars
of German’s heroes, but you are all of the
“nation of Mordechai,” who would never bow
down to Haman! The Haman of our own
times saw in the visage of every Jewish child
nothing less than the visage of G-d. Clubbing
that little girl to death would finally kill G-d
too.

Love Like They Hate
Sometimes we must learn from the Haman’s
of history, how to view a Jew in the proper
light.
We often hear that some Jews are hopelessly
assimilated and lost to our people; any
outreach work toward them would be futile,
they just don’t care. We give up on them.
Sometimes we feel that a small number of
Jews, a small community, does not justify the
investment of money and outreach work.
But for Haman and Hitler— every single Jew,
even the most secular and alienated Jew, was
a living embodiment of G-d Himself, hence
they would not spare any money or effort to
seize that Jew and murder him. If Hitler
would learn that there was a single Jewish
child left behind in a Polish village, he would
spare no toil to send the Gestapo and fetch
that Jewish baby. Because, for him, even the
presence of a single Jew, obstructed his path
to happiness and fulfillment; even a single
Jewish child was a living witness to G-d.
Can we, then, do any less? Can we come and
say, “Some Jews are just too far out there,” or
“why should I work so hard to help a single
person?” If a Jew is never too insignificant to
be hunted down in hate, he is never too
insignificant to be embraced with love.
The Solution for Anti-Semitism
Mordechai thus understood very well that

assimilation is not the real answer to Anti-
Semitism. The Anti-Semite sees something in

the Jew which would not disappear with
assimilation. The solution to Anti-Semitism is
to fight back with every possible means, with
tall heads, dignified spirits, and erect souls.
And to remember that our salvation will come
ultimately from one source and one source
only. As long as we remain connected with
that source, we will never die. For just as G-d
can’t be murdered, so will His people never
be destroyed.
Finally, we must recall that the world looks at
the Jew and sees G-d. Humanity looks to the
Jew for moral courage, leadership and
inspiration. The world is disappointed with
Jews who try so hard to fit in and lose their
unique contribution to civilization. They want
to see in us the living presence of G-d.
(This essay is based on an address by the
Lubavitcher Rebbe delivered on Purim 1966.)