Occam’s Razor, named after William of Occam is a diagnostic process that assumes that the simplest or most obvious explanation is usually the correct one.

Consider These Examples:

If not in Africa When you hear the sound of hoofs, think horses not zebras.

Or, more formally: Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity

At which point is the first conclusion drawn by the Occam’s Razor no longer viable?

You walk into your house and notice a broken drinking glass on the floor. Occam’s razor: It may have been lying on its side on the counter and just rolled off. After all there are always dishes stacked on the counter.

Then you discover a second broken item in another room. Hmmm. The new parameter forces a reapplication of the razor. You now conclude that a thief or vandal has entered your home.

You stealthily sneak through the house investigating. Who could have done this? You notice the back door open and the screen damaged near the bottom. Now the razor forces you to think of a non-human protagonist. Further investigation reveals that the neighbors’ Labrador who is now snoozing on your bed entered your yard and in an attempt to seek your companionship pushed his way through the screen door.

Do You Need A Sharper Razor?

Here is another one. An airplane flown into a tall building causes it to fall down neatly in its own footprint. It falls at the speed of the items falling off it. The building is 110 stories tall. It is a bit odd, but Occam’s razor says the most probable scenario is that the plane exploited some weakness in the superstructure of the building. Experts tell us that fire, not the impact, collapsed the structure. This is the first steel building the history of the world to collapse because of fire (or airplane impact).

Then a second building adjacent to it falls in the same way. An airplane hit this building before the first collision earlier that day. Like the first, this building is 110 stories tall. It also falls at the freefall speed neatly into its own footprint. You now begin to wonder how two buildings could fall in the same way hit by an impact they were designed to withstand. Does Occam’s razor need to be reapplied? After all the same experts are telling us that fire brought this one down too. This is the second steel building to collapse because of fire in the history of the world.

As you observe the burning piles of rubble another amazing thing happens. A third building which is 47 stories tall in the vicinity of the others also collapses. It has had some small fires in various floors but somehow falls strait down, again at freefall speed. No airplane has hit it, yet it collapses from the middle. Not so much is said about this one but the fire story is out there.

What of the razor? Applying it becomes far more difficult indeed. One airplane starts a fire in a steel framed building that causes it to collapse. Then on the same day a second, and after that a third? No modern skyscraper has ever fallen, although several have been hit by planes. In fact one of these buildings suffered a much greater fire in several lower floors years before.

What would William of Occam say? What indeed?

And A Third

Gulf War One is ended on the eve of Purim 1991. Purim is celebrated today by Jewish people as a great victory over a terrible evil. Purim is set in Shushan, found today in modern Iran. The arch villain in the Purim story is Haman. Saddam Hussien is compared to Haman. Occam’s razor however would lead us to simpler conclusions. The enemy had been defeated, Israel our ally, recently SCUDded by our Haman, would be celebrating a two-day holiday and this would be a good time to call an end to hostilities.

Then something else happens. Twelve years later the hapless Saddam/Haman still clinging to power is given a 48-hour ultimatum. He receives this on the eve of the two-day feast of Purim 2003. Exactly as the feast ends the long planned war against this seventy-year-old country begins.

What of Occam? Well, his initial conclusion still stands albeit on shaky ground. Have we just timed two wars against an ancient festival celebrated in that same region by coincidence?

It seems that not everyone assumes a disconnect between Israel (Esther and her people) and Iraq (Babylon) and Haman (Saddam) and the Gulf Wars. “President Bush went to war in Iraq “to secure our friend, Israel" and “everybody knows it," said Senator Fritz Hollings (March 20 2004). Senator Hollings is a democrat and may be a liberal so by default his opinion is not trustworthy. However Philip Zelikow is a conservative role model: "Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us?" and "I'll tell you what the real threat [is] and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dares not speak its name because...the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically because it's not a popular sell." (September 10, 2002)

Before we reapply the razor …

The first two examples above were tripartite. This one may be as well. The story of Esther did not happen in Babylon but rather in Persia today in Modern Iran. The city of Shushan still exists today. We are approaching yet another Purim (March 15 and 16). Another Haman is also on the scene; President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Will this one also yield an opportunity for a reapplication of the razor?

Here are two Purim readings. The first one is the article the opening quote came from:

Washington Is Our Shushan, Purim Is Our Day
By Brad Hirschfield

About seven months ago, I began receiving phone calls from the volunteers and professionals who were putting together the United Jewish Communities' "Washington 12" Young Leadership Conference held this week in Washington, D.C. I was to be a keynote speaker and a consultant to Washington 12. The calls all went something like this: "Hello, Brad? We may have an issue." At that moment I felt like mission control when the Apollo 13 astronauts issued those famous words, "Houston, we have a problem." The Washington 12 conference, scheduled for March 19-21, "conflicted" with Purim. And for a second I wasn't sure how to respond. I mean, let's face it, this was not exactly one of the circumstances that came up in yeshivah.

But then, I knew exactly how to respond. We have a "problem"? Purim "conflicts" with the conference? Let me get this straight, I said to them. Purim is a holiday that tells the story of highly successful, apparently secular Jews living in the capital of their empire during a time when Jews had attained unprecedented levels of influence and affluence. They use both in approaching the king and princes of their land to try to create a better, safer, more humane world.

The holiday celebrating this event happens to fall out when 4,000 highly successful Jews, many of whom the demographers and other custodians of Jewish culture would label "secular," would gather together in the capital of their empire in order to approach the king and princes of their land to try and create a better, safer and more humane world.

We have a "problem"?

Instead of a problem, we had been handed the opportunity of a lifetime. The Washington 12 conference became an opportunity to actually live out what our ancestors could only read about. Their fantasies became our realities. For 2,500 years, Jews have gathered around the world to tell the Purim story. And it's a beautiful story. Mordechai is an influential Jew who spends most of his time hanging out at the court of the King, Ahashverosh. In fact, it is his position in the court that allows him to foil the plot of two other court officials to assassinate the king. King Ahashverosh is a simple-minded guy who enjoys a good party and living the good life in the Persian capital of Shushan. Unfortunately, he tends to listen to bad advice, the worst of it coming from his chief minister, Haman. Haman, of course, is the bad guy in the story and his deepest desire is to rid the world of the Jews. While Haman is busy unfolding his plot, Mordechai encourages his niece, Esther, to enter a contest to become the queen. She does, she wins, she intervenes on behalf of the Jewish people. We all live happily ever after.

It's a great story not only because we live happily ever after. It's a great story because Purim promises that we actually can change the world. It promises that we can be real players in a global community. It promises that we can make a difference as Jews-for ourselves, our people, and for humanity. The Purim story teaches that political action is sacred action. It teaches that a strong spiritual identity propels you outward into the world, and does not become an excuse for retreating from it. It teaches that each and every one of us can be the heroes of the story.

Now I thank God that we have kept on telling the story of such promises. But let's face it, they were promises that we really couldn't keep. Until now. As a people, we were masters of davening our dream of a more perfect world, but only now, more than any time in the last 2,500 years, can we move from davening our dream to delivering the dream. We now have the power and the freedom to ask: "What do we want the world to look like?" And we have the capacity to plan the strategies and make the moves to get it there.

Like our Persian ancestors, we are very fortunate. Washington is our Shushan. Like Mordechai back then, we actually are seated at the gate of the king. In truth, we are within the gates. We have moved from being petitioners to being partners. We are actually positioned to speak out for what we believe, and to have it heard by all of the right people. The king and princes of this land have welcomed us into their courts, and when we speak, they listen. In fact, we are them and they are us.

The real question we must ask ourselves is: When you have that kind of power and influence, how do you use it? How do you build institutions and relationships that help secure human dignity wherever and whenever it is threatened?

Of course, if Washington is our Shushan, then we can be the Mordechais and Esthers of the story. So we must ask, are we really up to being Mordechai and Esther?

Who was Mordechai? Mordechai might well have been counted as an assimilated Jew by the "experts" of his day. After all, how else could he endanger his life by becoming enmeshed more actively in the politics of the empire than in those of the Jewish community? How else could he turn to Esther as the source of salvation rather than running to the synagogue and offering a prayer to God? How else could he encourage his niece to enter a contest whose grand prize was to marry a non-Jew?

But if we could just imagine, as Mordechai must have, that Jewishness is so expansive, and the global stage upon which we are blessed to play it out is so wide, then we might then move from our obsessive fears of assimilation toward a Jewish model of integration. This is a model in which all of who we are gets to enter whatever we mean by Jewish, and then everything that we mean by Jewish will shape who we are. The only thing that stands in our way is fear. The fear that either we are too small, or that Jewishness is. Of course, neither is true. Let's be like Mordechai.

Who was Mordechai? Mordechai was a fearless Jew. I do not mean that he was unafraid to ignore Haman's demand that he bow down. Of course there was that. I mean the fearlessness that allows one to play out their personal identity in the larger world in which they live, the fearlessness that propels one to become a participant in the politics of the day without shying away from publicly proclaiming the deep spiritual roots of that participation. The fearlessness to sit in the court of the king, and proudly make a difference because he appreciated the potential of the power and influence that he had. When we share that appreciation of the potential of Jewish action in the larger world, and act on it, we are Mordechai.

And who was Esther? Esther was a woman who entered the Persian version of "Who Wants To Marry A Multimillionaire," and won! Esther was a woman whose lifestyle was so Persian that Mordechai could advise her not to tell Ahashverosh or his courtiers that she was Jewish. Of course, that implies that she must not have performed any of the practices that would have singled her out as a Jew-passing on the shrimp, say, or taking a few minutes to say her morning prayers. In short, Esther, even more than Mordechai, would have been a poster-girl for discontinuity and marginal Jewish identity. Yet she emerges as the heroine of the story.

Who was Esther? Esther was a strong, smart, sexy Jewish woman. Esther loved life and loved the Jewish people. And like all great loves, hers propelled her to take risks. She understood that one uses one's strengths and resources, not only to preserve the past or to protect the status quo, but to build the future. Esther was bigger than the false dichotomies between commitment to the past and commitment to the future, between religious and secular, between insider and outsider, which so often divide us. When we rise above those false dichotomies in order to build the community, when we take risks for those who are vulnerable, we are Esther.

At Washington 12, we did read the Purim story from the Megillah, but we did even more. We experienced the story of Purim. We danced between the past, the present and the future as we celebrated one of those remarkable moments in human history when stories of the past become resources in the present for building a more meaningful future. We celebrated our ability to turn our parents' dreams into the realities of our lives. We celebrated the capacity of each and every one of us to be a Mordechai or an Esther.

http://www.clal.org/csa16.html

YESHIVAT HARA'AYON HAYEHUDI (Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea)
Jerusalem, Israel
HaRav Yehuda Kroizer SHLIT"A, Rosh Yeshiva (Yeshiva dean)

PARSHAT TETZAVEH (Sabbath reading)
11 Adar, 5766/10-11 March, 2006

PURIM 5766 - AND STILL GOING STRONG!

Some weeks ago the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while denying that a Holocaust against the Jews took place during World War 2, stated that there was indeed a holocaust which took place in Iran some 2000 years ago, in which the Jews killed thousands of people, and to this day still celebrate year in and year out with singing and drinking. He was, of course, talking about the story of Purim.

Some might indeed mistakenly come to the conclusion that all killing is a bad thing. In fact, we find even among fellow liberal Jews, that the holiday of Purim can make them blush and feel uncomfortable, for here we find the Jews celebrating the downfall of their enemies after killing some 75,000 of them. Now how un-Jewish is that?

There is, then, in this world good and evil, and they are not the same - and Woe to one who mixes up the two! Take, for instance, the example during World War 2, when Germany bombed England and England bombed Germany. Both bombed, but surely, every sane person knows that one was pure evil and one was fighting for good.

Hashem has created good as well as evil in this world, and it is our job to complete creation and eliminate evil from the world. Amalek and his physical and spiritual heirs must ultimately be wiped off the face of the earth, as King David said: I hate all those who hate You (Hashem). King David himself had killed thousands, as the Book of Samuel tell us: Saul with his hundreds and David with his thousands. Still, all whom King David killed were looked upon as a sacrifice before Hashem, for David had eliminated evil from this world, thereby making it a better place.

Today we are witnessing, throughout the world and in Israel, the mercy of fools; those taking pity on the wicked - such behavior is not good, but evil. How clearer a signal could Hashem have sent us than the Hamas landslide victory? Now it is clear for all to see that there are no innocent bystanders among the Arabs living here in Israel. Clearly, the great majority of them want to see Israel destroyed, as was made clear by them in their elections. It is high time for Israel to act accordingly and stop playing around, claiming that there are innocents in the area and moderates to work with. Clearly the law must be the same for all of them.

And still, we see the nations of the world continuing to explain away the Hamas victory, even as the Arabs have learned to use the great tool of democracy to their advantage. They (the nations) too, are guilty of taking pity on the wicked, and surely this, too, will backfire on them in the end. As nation after nation invites Hamas to visit, and the European Union and the U.S. continues to pour millions of dollars in the PA, which of course will go to continuing their terror campaign.

So, it really is too bad that the beloved president Ahmadinejad of Iran does not understand the difference between one who comes to kill, and one who kills defending himself. For history repeats itself so often. And if he comes, like so many before him, against the Jewish State - he and his people will be the ones to fall. It is worth recalling the strange last words uttered by one of the leading Nazis, who was hung after Nuremberg trials: "PurimFest 1945".

So take note, cruel and harsh world: Purim is still going strong for the Jewish people!

With love of Israel, Levi Chazen