Climbing the Tree of Life: Duality and Unity in Purim

(14) Then his wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, “Let a stake be put up, fifty cubits high, and in the morning ask the king to have Mordecai impaled on it. Then you can go gaily with the king to the feast.” The proposal pleased Haman, and he had the stake put up (lit. made the tree).

(10) So they impaled Haman on the stake which he had put up for Mordecai, and the king’s fury abated.

(1) The Megillah [Scroll of Esther] is read on the eleventh, on the twelfth, on the thirteenth, on the fourteenth, [or] on the fifteenth [of Adar], not earlier and not later. Cities surrounded with walls from the days of Yehoshua son of Nun read it on the fifteenth [of Adar]. Villages and large cities read it on the fourteenth, but villages read in advance on the day of assembly.

A teaching by Yehuda Leib Alter of Ger, from Sfas Emes, on Purim.

It is written in the Gemara that we are obligated to become so intoxicated on Purim that we cannot tell the difference between “Blessed is Mordechai” and “Cursed is Haman”. I heard a teaching on this from the holy mouth of my teacher and grandfather [Rabbi Yitzhak Meir], that one must go above the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Although I don’t exactly remember his words, it seems that he connected the “tree fifty cubits tall” to the forty-nine gates of impurity, for there are forty-nine types of impurity and purity. The power of Amalek is found at every one of those forty-nine levels, but the fiftieth gate is that of holiness. There is no dualism there, but rather only good, for it is the root of unity. So it is written [about the war against Amalek], “when Moses raised his hands” — that is, to the fiftieth gate and the Tree of Life, which is the Torah — Israel would prevail, but when he let his hands fall, Amalek would prevail”.