Learning from Our Queen

Life Lessons from Esther HaMalkah

The heroine of the Purim story. The queen that every child wishes to be. Esther HaMalkah is an icon of yiras Shamayim and nobility, one who was placed in the most adverse situation and managed to rise above the pain to achieve her mission and save a nation. As we prepare to celebrate Purim, here are some life lessons we can each learn from the Queen herself, Esther HaMalkah. 

Finding Our Destiny

Some of the most poignant words in the entire megillah are those that Mordechai uses to encourage Esther to come before the king at risk of her life. “U’mi yodel’a im l’es ka’zos higaat l’malchus.” Who knows if everything you’ve been through until now, all of the circumstances that led you to this point, were orchestrated by Hashem solely for the purpose of helping your people. This very moment in time, this mission laid out before you, is your very reason for existence. How can you pass that up? 

We are all placed in this world with a mission, and everything that happens in life is setting the stage for that mission, giving us the tools we need to accomplish it, and putting us in the place we need to be in order to accomplish it. We don’t know what that mission is, but we do know that we don’t want to pass it up when it is right in front of us. It might be hard, it might seem impossible, but it is the reason why we were put here in the first place. 

And it’s not only our global mission, our tachlis hachaim, that can benefit when we heed these powerful words. It’s really every encounter, every situation, where we feel we want to defer.

But Hashem placed us right here, right now, to make a difference in this moment. 

U’mi yodei’a if the reason Hashem had you walking down this block at this moment was so that you can wish a warm good Shabbos to the woman walking past you, who, unbeknownst to you, has been feeling lonely and uncared for. U’mi yodei’a if the reason you took a wrong turn and found yourself stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic as a result was so that you can be the one to let the poor, hapless driver turning off the side street make a left turn in front of you? U’mi yodel’a if you moved to this neighborhood and this home so that you can host a shiur that will bring everyone together and inspire the lives of a dozen Yiddishe mammas every week? 

We don’t know for sure why we are brought to these moments, but all we can do is make the most of them and hope that we are thereby accomplishing the mission that Hashem placed us in this world to accomplish. 

Doing the Hard Thing

We often don’t appreciate enough the sacrifices that Esther HaMalkah made for her people. We know the end of the story already; we’ve read the megillah so many times, we know it has a happy ending. But she didn’t. She knew what happened to her predecessor, the last woman who defied the king. She knew that she was safe in the moment, as long as she didn’t rock the boat. She could have stayed comfortable and cushy in her palace, serving Hashem as well as she was able. 

But she didn’t take the easy way out. She knew what was expected of her, and as scary and uncomfortable as it may have been, she did it. This courage didn’t die with the heroic Queen Esther; she passed it down to all of us. This ability to do what is right even when it’s hard, to take our lives in our hands, swallow our fears and come before the earthly monsters we face, is part of our heritage. We can do the hard thing, and when we do, we have a nation behind us, applauding our efforts. 

Engendering Achdus

When Mordechai apprised Esther of the unfortunate decree facing her people, her first reaction was, “Lech kenos.” Gather them together. She understood right away that in order for Klal Yisroel to persevere, they needed to be united. Division splinters our power and weakens our ability to come closer to Hashem. Esther knew that in such a time of danger, the only way to avert crisis would be to do so together. A Yiddishe mamme, with her wisdom and intuition, has the power to bring about this achdus, to bring her family together, her friends together. When we recognize the magnitude of the yeshuos that come from achdus, we can perhaps invest our heart and soul into bringing people together, into erasing the divisions we’ve created in our own hearts and in our own lives.

We can learn from Esther HaMalkah to prioritize achdus as we seek the yeshuos our nation so desperately needs. 

Tefillos Before All

Lech kenos, she said. Gather them all and fast and daven for me. Even as she herself entered the lion’s den, she did so whispering words of tefillah. Esther knew we are nothing without tefillah, and everything with it. Without Hashem, none of our problems will be solved, and with Him at our side, we don’t have problems to solve. When we think of Esther Hamalkah murmuring “Keili, Keili, lamah azavtani,” as she strode tremulously toward the foreboding throne, we can picture any one of us heading into an important meeting or making that phone call to a teacher with words of tefillah, a plea for guidance and support on our lips and in our hearts. 

It’s the quintessential tool a Yiddishe mamma carries in her arsenal. The power of tefillah to pave paths, to move mountains, to build worlds. Our tefillah comes with hishtadlus, of course. Esther didn’t just daven and fast and then sit back and wait for the yeshuah. She did the hard thing. But hishtadlus without tefillah before, during, and after isn’t real hishtadlus. It’s just foolishness. 

Grow Despite the Curves in the Road

Esther was a pious woman from the start, and we can presume she had dreams of marrying a talmid chacham and building a Torah home with him. Many of us have those dreams, and hopefully our children do too. But what happens when Hashem has other plans for us? It is not b’derech hateva in our days to be forced to marry a goyishe king, but it can happen that the person we marry isn’t what we dreamed of, and our hopes for our home seem to evaporate into thin air. 

What happens then? We can give up on our dreams and, following our spouse’s lead, live a life devoid of Torah and yiras Shamayim, or we can find ways to bring ruchniyus into our home on our own. Stuck in the palace, Esther found ways to remember Shabbos, to hold onto her faith on her own. Ideally, a couple partners in the ruchniyus of the home, but in the unfortunate situation where one member of the partnership checks out, the woman can use her own binah yeseirah to keep the ruchniyus alive. 

It’s not always so drastic. Your husband might be a wonderful masmid, but he doesn’t run a Shabbos table the way you envisioned your Shabbos table to be. He might wake up later or learn less than you hoped—or than he originally did. You don’t have to despair of having the home of your dreams. You can be an ishah kesheirah who infuses the home with her own brand of ruchniyus, without disrespecting your husband and while appreciating all of the many maalos that he does have. 

Power of Silence

When Esther first came to the palace, Mordechai advised her not to disclose her heritage. She kept quiet about her past, about who she was, and didn’t reveal any of it to her own husband.

This enabled the yeshuah to play out the way it did, and her silence bore fruit in unimaginable ways.

In a world where voices are amplified, where loud is bold and courageous, Esther comes to remind us of the power of silence. Siyag l’chachmah shesikah. In our own dignified, refined, and patient way, we can bring about great salvations. Our strength doesn’t always lie in the decibel level of our voice, but rather in our calculated, quiet use of that voice in the right time and the right place.  Esther’s hiddenness is her essence; it’s in her name.

It’s a part of tznius we sometimes forget.

It’s not only about dressing right, it’s also about being humble, quiet, about not being brash and loud and spilling everything about ourselves. 

Move Past Your Past

The megillah makes a point of mentioning Esther’s past. She was orphaned of both parents and raised by her cousin. She didn’t have the ideal background, the support of parents, a home of love and warmth. She went into galus and had only her cousin to take care of her. And yet, she rose from that disadvantage and became one of the most famous women in our history. She became the shlucha through whom an entire nation was saved, the catalyst to one of the greatest nissim in our people’s storied history. 

Again, she didn’t know it at the time. A young girl bereft of both of her parents, she had no idea she would one day save a nation. She just moved through life, one step at a time, forward focused until she grew into the mission Hashem had in mind for her. 

We, too, can often get bogged down by less than ideal circumstances in our past. We may have had a rough childhood; we may have suffered in ways that are hard to get past. Perhaps it feels like the odds are stacked against us, that our background holds us back and prevents us from becoming all that we can be. Hopefully, we can look to Esther for chizzuk and remember that the greatest of our leaders often came from the most challenging backgrounds. As long as we can hold strong and have faith, we can keep moving forward into the future we were meant to have. 

Focus on Inner Beauty

When Esther joined the wanna-be queens in the palace against her will, she had every beauty regimen at her disposal. But she had no interest. She took the bare minimum and forwent all of the preening and beautifying that all the other women busied themselves with. She focused on her inner self. As Hagai kept plying her with products, she demurred. 

We live in a world today that is plying us as well with the latest beauty products and procedures. We are in danger of falling prey to the allures of outer beauty, at risk of neglecting our inner selves. When outer beauty becomes the focus, we lose sight of our neshamah, where our focus should really lie. Esther is our role model. According to some meforshim, she was blessed with great natural beauty, and according to others she was not. But in any case, she knew where her priorities stood, and they were not with the makeup brush and botox fillers. 

Power of One

Esther was just one woman, but her actions saved an entire nation. Most of us won’t end up in the palace of a foreign king or live a life like Esther that could fill storybooks—and megillas for that matter.

But we have to live with the knowledge that we have the power to change history.

When we have the opportunity to do something, to make a difference in some way, and we feel ourselves hesitating, we can remember Esther Hamalkah and the courage she had to forge on. 

So many organizations and initiatives that have changed our world were started by one person, one person who took the kochos Hashem gave them and made a difference, filled a need, made history.

Never underestimate your power to make a difference; you may be the answer to someone’s prayers, even the prayers of an entire nation. 

Originally appeared in The Lakewood Shopper.