Purim: Shlomo and the Egged Bus Drivers
In this rare recording, Reb Shlomo Shares his Purim experience with the drivers of the buses of the Egged Bus Cooperative, the largest bus company in Israel.
Audio
Purim: Shlomo and the Egged Bus Drivers
Background
The Shabbat before Purim is Parshat Zachor. According to many Halachic authorities there is a Biblical requirement for everyone to hear the Torah reading on this Shabbat.
“Zachor” means to remember. On this Shabbat we take a second Torah out of the Ark and we read from the Book of Deuteronomy (25:17-19) about Amalek, a nation which always harbored an intense hatred for the Jews.
When the Jews left Egypt, there wasn’t a nation who dared to pick a fight with the Jews. Who in their right mind would start up with a people whose G-d just smacked around Egypt, the sole super-power of the times, with ten awesome plagues, and drowned the surviving few in a sea which split to allow the Jews to cross?! “Peoples heard and were agitated; terror gripped the dwellers of Phillistia. Then the chieftains of Edom were confounded. Trembling gripped the powers of Moab, all the dwellers of Canaan dissolved” (Exodus 15:14-15).
Only Amalek, driven by profound hatred which defied logic, came to battle the Jews.
We are commanded to constantly remember the evil deeds of Amalek and destroy them. We read this on the Shabbat before Purim because Haman was a descendant of Amalek.
A little Amalek lurks within every person. Amalek is the voice within the person which encourages a person not to allow him or herself to be inspired. No matter what sort of Divine Providence a person encounters — and everyone does — Amalek is shrugging it off.
Egged Bus Cooperative is the largest bus company in Israel, and the second largest in the world (after London Buses). A cooperative owned by its members, Egged employs 6,117 workers and has 3,303 buses for more than 1,038 service routes and 3,984 alternative routes all over Israel. Egged makes 44,957 trips every day, transporting about a million passengers over 810,519 km of roads. Egged’s bus routes reach most settlements, kibbutzim, moshavim and cities in Israel. Egged also runs local bus networks in most Israeli cities and towns.
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