Rabbah and R' Zeira's Purim seudah - an incredible take on an incredible story

The gemara (Meg 7b) follows up on Rava's statement

 אמר רבא מיחייב איניש לבסומי בפוריא עד דלא ידע בין ארור המן לברוך מרדכי

with a story:

רבה ורבי זירא עבדו סעודת פורים בהדי הדדי איבסום קם רבה שחטיה לרבי זירא למחר בעי רחמי ואחייה לשנה אמר ליה ניתי מר ונעביד סעודת פורים בהדי הדדי אמר ליה לא בכל שעתא ושעתא מתרחיש ניסא

The Maharasha writes, דבר תמוה הוא לפרשו כפשטיה, taken at face value, the story is incredible.  Even granting the inebriation of Rava, or Rabbah according to some girsa'ot, could he really have committed murder?  Would an even keeled person (much less a tzadik like an amora!), out of the blue, without any prior animosity towards a person, jump up and kill them, no matter how drunk they might be?  Were that the case bars should be the scenes of a lot more murders.      

Some explain (see Baal HaMaor quoting Rabeinu Ephraim) the whole point of the story is in its shock value, as an illustration of the dangers of drinking עד דלא ידע בין ארור המן לברוך מרדכי.  It could be that the Rambam and others who write that one should drink until one dozes off read the story as a rejection of Rava's extreme formulation. 

Others (e.g. see the Ben Ish Chai, or the Sichos of the L Rebbe) take the story less literally, and explain that Rabbah taught R' Zeira great esoteric secrets of Torah, which R' Zeira's soul could not receive while contained in his physical body, so his soul departed.  The Rebbe notes that the name Rabbah indicates rav=greatness, while Zeira is like the Aramaic word=smallness, indicating the gap between their knowledge.

Chasam Sofer in his teshuvos (OC end of 185) points out that the gemara (Shabbos 156a) tells us that someone born under the planetary influence of mars will have a proclivity to spill blood, הַאי מַאן דִּבְמַאְדִּים — יְהֵי גְּבַר אָשֵׁיד דְּמָא.  Guess who was born when mars was visible?  אָמַר רַבָּה: אֲנָא בְּמַאְדִּים הֲוַאי.  None other than Rabbah!  Therefore, says Chasam Sofer, it is davka Rabbah who ended up committing murder.  This is why the majority of poskim do not reject Rava's statement in the face of the story, as most people do not share that proclivity to blood lust.  

R' Menashe Klein (O.C. Tinyana 556) writes that Rabbah intended to channel his blood lust towards the fulfillment of a mitzvah and wanted to carry out mech'ias Amalek k'peshuto.  How did R' Zeira get involved in that?  He suggests that R' Zeira, as is our custom, came to Rabbah's feast dressed in costume.  Rather than dress up like Mordechai, like all other little boys, R' Zeira decided he would dress up like Haman, or an Amaleiki.  Overcome with drunkenness, in his zeal to fulfill mechi'as Amalek, Rabbah did not recognized his friend, thought it was really Amalek at his party, and took advantage of the opportunity.  

Just when you thought we've reached the limits of creative interpretation here, I found in the last piece of the "yoman" kept by R' Yisrael Be'eri (note for those who learned in Kerem b'Yavneh: this is R' Binyamin Be'eri's father), R' Yaakov Moshe Charlap's son in law, (well worth your reading in its entirety!) a pshat that I am not sure is not Purim torah, but you can decide.  R' Charlap writes that there must have been some friction between Rabbah and R' Zeira before this incident.  The murder was the culmination of the story, not the start of the story.  Who was R' Zeira?  Chazal tell us (Kesubos 110b) that R' Zeira avoided R" Yehuda because R' Yehudah held there was an issur of going from Bavel to Eretz Yisrael.  The gemara (BM 85) tells us that R' Zeira made aliya and then fasted so that he would forget the Babvli and could immerse himself completely in Talmud Yerushalmi, the torah of Eretz Yisrael.  (My son pointed out R' Zeira is highlighted in the last sugya in Horiyos as the exemplar of exceptional ability to be maksheh u'mefareik, so his transformation from a Bavli-Amora to a Yerushalmi thinker must have been a dramatic change.)  Not only was R' Zeira a confirmed Zionist, a lover of Eretz Yisrael, but he was also a great lover of the Jewish people.  The gemara (San 37) writes that he was mekareiv a bunch of outlaws in his neighborhood, against the wishes of the other Rabbis who wanted nothing to do with them.  Who was Rabbah?  The gemara (Shabbos 153) writes that Rabbah was so despised by the inhabitants of Pumbadita because of his criticisms that Abayei wondered if anyone would even come to his funeral אֲמַר לֵיהּ אַבָּיֵי לְרַבָּה: כְּגוֹן מָר דְּסָנוּ לֵיהּ כּוּלְּהוּ פּוּמְבְּדִיתָאֵי, מַאן מַחֵים הֶסְפֵּידָא.  Rabbah and R' Zeira represent a clash of ideologies, two different approaches to avodas Hashem.  They met at the Purim seudah, things came to a head, and Rabbah, in the heat of the moment, struck R' Zeira.

Fast foward to modern times.  R Charlap quotes his rebbe, Rav Kook, as saying who is R' Zeira other than himself, a great lover of Eretz Yisrael, a great lover of even the most wayward of Am Yisrael.  Zeira is roshei teivos, the same letters as זירא = זה רב אברהם יצחק.  And Rabbah is of course those who stood against Rav Kook and did not follow in his footsteps.  

May we be zocheh this year to fulfill mechi'as Amalek k'peshuto mamesh, in the literal sense, and I make no apologies for choosing sides here, I hope we become a little more like R' Zeira, to come to greater love of Eretz Yisrael and drawing close those who need to be drawn close.  Just as Purim was the prelude to the return and aliya of Ezra and binyan ha'bayis, so too should our Purim be the prelude to our full return to Eretz Yisrael, culminating in binyan ha'bayis as well.