By Rabbi David Jaffe
I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say that the world is feeling like a pretty hard place for most people reading this newsletter. Thankfully the fighting and killing in Gaza has stopped for now, but news of the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz murders was heartrending and the destruction of Palestinian lives and property in Masafer Yatta and other Palestinian areas continues at a fast clip. The destructive actions of our government here in the U.S. continue to pile up. Adar, a month of spiritual reversal, is just in time.
My teacher, Rabbi Gedalia Fleer, writes about a key difference between the two major Biblical era redemptions. In the Exodus from Egypt, the conditions of life needed to completely change - the Israelites went from being enslaved people to being free. However, in the Purim redemption, none of the conditions change. The Jews were subjects of Ahashveros before the redemption and they were still his subjects after. The form of life stayed the same. In some ways, this makes Purim the more powerful and lasting redemption because it didn’t depend on a nature-changing, massive upheaval. Rather, it was a reversal, a transformation within existing forms, which makes this type of redemption much more accessible and repeatable.
Nahafochu - the key word of the Megilla means reversed, turned upside down, transformed. The message of Purim is that the potential for transformation—from threat to safety, from sorrow to joy, from oppression to redemption—is built into the fabric of reality and is never far away. Things are incredibly heavy right now. The Adar and Purim message is that simcha/joy is still possible. In fact, it grows in relation to the tight, constricted place we find ourselves today because joy, like comedy, is an experience of opposites. Comedy works because one thing is expected and its opposite emerges instead. One aspect of joy is that it is an experience of expansiveness in a place of constriction.
I don’t know when and where this flip will happen. Adar and Purim provide us with a field of possibility for transformation within our existing conditions.
The support we give each other, particularly those most targeted by the new regime, is a key element in this transformation. I’m feeling personally called to do something in support of the many thousands of government workers and contractors who’ve lost their jobs and paychecks with almost no notice and for no good cause. These people have mortgages and heating bills and other essential expenses that now cannot be paid. This is an example of what I’ve heard journalist Hanna Rosin call the “casual cruelty” of this administration. I’m looking for ways to financially, or otherwise, support people who now need assistance. I’d love to see efforts like this on a large scale. Please write us if you, or anyone you know, is organizing this kind of support.
Imagine large webs of support and mutual aid emerging in the coming period in the shadow of all this casual cruelty. I’m careful not to think of this as a silver lining. Rather, it would be an alternate reality of solidarity, dignity and compassion that exists alongside the cruelty. It is the contrast that produces joy.
May this be a season of reversal, joy, and triumph of the spirit of community, despite, and in contrast, to it all.
Chodesh Tov,
David