The snake of amalek | Rabbi Stewart Weiss | Beit Midrash

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קטגוריה משנית

What, exactly, was Haman’s problem? Here is a guy
who had pretty much everything anyone could ask
for (except maybe a sympathetic wife!) & yet he
just can’t leave well enough alone. He’s got to
develop a whole plot to kill the entire Jewish
nation. And why? Because 1 Jew wouldn’t bow down
to him?! I mean, is that over-reacting, or what?

The Gemara asks: "Haman min haTorah, minayin?
Where in the Torah is Haman mentioned?" Now, of
course, Haman lived long after the Torah was
given, so that sounds like a strange question.
But since the Torah is a living document - Torah
Chayim - & contains all the events in history
both past & present, there must be at least an
allusion to him. So what is it? The answer:

"Ha-min ha-etz asher tziviticha l’vilti echol
mimenu, achalta?" Did you eat from the tree (of
knowing right & wrong) in Gan Eden that I told
you not to?" asks Hashem. (Ha-min has the same
letters as Haman). That’s the source the Gemara
brings. But hang on; there are many words in the
Torah with a hay/mem/nun. Why choose davka this one?

Many personalities in the Torah are compared to
animals: Yehuda is a lion, Yosef is an ox,
Binyamin a wolf, etc. What creature connects to
Haman? The snake! So citing a Biblical story that
includes a snake does makes sense. But it goes a lot deeper than that.

Chava (& Adam) were given free reign of Gan Eden.
They had only one restriction to which they had
to adhere: Do not eat from the etz ha-dat. But
they just couldn’t resist it! It’s like telling a
kid: "You can have everything in the fridge
except that one black & white cookie - that's
off-limits to you." The kid will undoubtedly try
every which way to get to that luscious cookie.

So that slithery snake – a psychologically
sophisticated serpent with an uncanny ability to
know how people think – preyed upon Adam & Eve’s
unsatisfied desire to have that one single thing that was forbidden to them.

There is another significant reference to snakes
in the Torah. In parshat Chukat, the people
complain to Moshe about their "meager"
sustenance. But why should they complain?! They
miraculously get water from the rock, & the
marvelous Mahn tastes like almost anything they
desire. But there must have been 1 tiny problem –
there were indeed a few foods on the "no-no list"
- & that drove them crazy. So what happened as a
response? Snakes came & bit them!

Haman had a problem with one solitary Jew, & it
drove him mad. He ignored all the other compliant
citizens who bowed down to him, & focused only on
stubborn Mr. Mordechai, who would not budge on
his convictions. Haman would not relent & the
end, well, was "bad-noose" for him.