Being happy to look like a Jew
The joy toward which all of this moves is joy in belonging to Hashem:
כִּי־בוֹ יִשְׂמַח לִבֵּנוּ כִּי בְשֵׁם קׇדְשׁוֹ בָטָֽחְנוּ׃
For in Him our hearts rejoice, because we have trusted in His holy Name. — Psalms 33:21
The rav brings a teaching from the Ben Ish Chai’s Ben Ish Chayil, Part I, the second derashah for Shabbos Zachor, printed page 27. The original passage describes Haman’s resentment of visible Jewish signs. The rav develops this into an explanation of Haman’s opposition to Jewish simcha. Haman is disturbed by the visible difference of the Jewish people:
וַיֹּאמֶר הָמָן לַמֶּלֶךְ אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ יֶשְׁנוֹ עַם־אֶחָד מְפֻזָּר וּמְפֹרָד בֵּין הָֽעַמִּים בְּכֹל מְדִינוֹת מַלְכוּתֶךָ וְדָתֵיהֶם שֹׁנוֹת מִכׇּל־עָם וְאֶת־דָּתֵי הַמֶּלֶךְ אֵינָם עֹשִׂים וְלַמֶּלֶךְ אֵין־שֹׁוֶה לְהַנִּיחָֽם׃
Haman said to King Achashverosh: “There is one people, scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws differ from those of every other people, and they do not observe the king’s laws. It is not worthwhile for the king to leave them alone.” — Esther 3:8
The Ben Ish Chai reads the complaint as including the visible signs of Jewish identity, particularly milah and peyos. The rav draws out its emotional meaning. Haman can tolerate a Jew who wishes he were someone else, who believes the real pleasure is elsewhere. A Jew who takes joy in his relationship with Hashem, and is unashamed to express it, opposes the very force Haman represents.
Mordechai is introduced as a Jewish man:
אִישׁ יְהוּדִי הָיָה בְּשׁוּשַׁן הַבִּירָה וּשְׁמוֹ מׇרְדֳּכַי בֶּן יָאִיר בֶּן־שִׁמְעִי בֶּן־קִישׁ אִישׁ יְמִינִֽי׃
There was a Jewish man in Shushan the capital, and his name was Mordechai son of Yair, son of Shimi, son of Kish, a man of Binyamin. — Esther 2:5
The third Shabbos Zachor derashah, printed page 30, explains the Gemara’s description of Mordechai as muchtar b’nimuso, crowned with his distinctive practice. The Ben Ish Chai pictures his large, conspicuous peyos identifying him as a Jew even among many officers. His Jewishness is not something he is trying to disguise. The rav applies this to walking through an airport, wearing a yarmulke or tzitzis, or needing to put on tefillin. He tells of meeting a man in Eretz Yisrael with a large beard and long peyos. Asked which chassidus he belonged to, the man answered that he simply looked like a Jew.
The rav then explicitly says that the point is not whether someone has long peyos. The outward example serves the inward question: am I happy about being a Jew, or merely enduring it? It is not a test that ranks a person’s Jewishness by hairstyle.
He contrasts this joy with the pleasure sought at Achashverosh’s feast. Megillah 12a records the students of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai proposing enjoyment of that feast as a reason for the decree; Rabbi Shimon challenges it as an explanation for Jews outside Shushan and gives a different answer. The rav’s homiletic focus is on their word “enjoyed”: what happens when a person looks outside his relationship with Hashem for the happiness he thinks that relationship cannot provide?
Even the haircut can tell the story
Megillah 16a tells how Esther closed the bathhouses and barbershops, leaving Haman to bathe Mordechai and cut his hair before leading him through the city. Haman complains about being made a bath attendant and barber. The Gemara adds that he had been a barber for twenty-two years.
The rav brings an additional suggestion, expressly as a possibility he saw from someone else. If Haman was particularly irritated by Mordechai’s visible Jewish identity, being required to leave him his peyos would deepen the reversal. The enemy would have to serve the very Jewish appearance he wanted erased.
The imagined haircut conversation, with modern haircut numbers and Haman offering a non-Jewish style, is the rav’s playful expansion. It is not dialogue recorded in the Gemara, and the additional suggestion has not been presented as the Ben Ish Chai’s own words.
Purim’s joy therefore does not rest only on what I have accomplished or on a list of my strengths. Its foundation can be the simple fact that I am a Jew and have a relationship with Hashem. That is something to dance about even before I have become the person I hope to be.
If I do not feel it at the beginning of the day, I can begin with a laugh and create a little room for it. The rav gives an ordinary example from the shul: a large smiley face by the door in Adar. Someone enters, sees the silly decoration, and smiles. Its simplicity is part of how it works.
Chazal teach that when Adar enters, we increase joy. As Purim and Parshas Zachor approach, the rav asks us to use Dovid’s advice deliberately: a little permitted playfulness that helps bring joy back to serving Hashem.