Purim-The Precious from the Vile

In the era ushering in the Messiah, the main achievement will be the extraction of the precious from the vile, as in, “Therefore, thus says God, if you return, and I bring you back, and if you bring forth the precious out of the vile, you shall be as My mouth (Jeremiah 15:19).”

Specifically, from a place of the Evil Inclination and where sin prevails, from their will He take you, by means of repentance. As our Sages state, “The son of David will come in a generation that is completely guilty (Sanhedrin 98a).” A soul that repents from a life full of sin, issues from the portion of the Messiah. Similarly, King David is described as “he who exalted the yoke of repentance (Moed Katan 16b).” And it is known of the Congregation of Israel, that, “her feet go down to death (Proverbs 5:5),” May God protect us!

In the era ushering in the Messiah, the souls will be derived from the feet (spiritual loneliness), where wickedness and the Evil Inclination prevail. Therefore, it is precisely a generation of such souls that will merit the Messiah.

That is why our Sages said, “And the Lord saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good (Genesis 1:31),” this is the Evil Inclination [Bereishit Rabbah 9:9].

Similarly, the soul of the Messiah himself is born from such a place, for it is stated in the Zohar, regarding the daughters of Lot and Lot himself, that they are the source of the power of the Evil Inclination (Volume I 109a-112a), and from there grew the root of the son of David.

But here is the essence of perfection for them: the source of evil will be transformed into the good, what the Talmud describes as “the slaughter of the Evil Inclination (Sukkah 52a).” The Messiah’s soul is the nethermost of the body, and the closest to evil, possessing all manner of intensity. In this material world the generations progressively decline. But in the messianic era, when the Tikkun is performed, it will emerge as the good, “last in action, first in thought.”

That is the mystery of “And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning (Ezekiel 1:14),” for where the light stops, from there it returns and begins to illuminate and becomes the head of the beam. As the Sages said, “An inverted world have I seen (Pesachim 50a).” [Tzidkat haTzaddik #111]

One of the Purim mitzvot is to drink until we cannot tell the difference between Bless Mordechai and Curse Haman. This is actually a mitzvah to achieve the extraction of the precious from the vile, as described above, as an important aspect of the miracle of redemption.