JEWISH HOME LA

Dear Readers,

The Megillah is a perfect source of inspiration for times such as these. In those days everything seemed upside down. The devastating decree happened at a time when a Yid was Queen and Mordechai occupied a position as a top advisor who had actually saved the kings life. The salvation happened despite a rabid Jew hater being given carte blanche permission to do as he wished.

Although it reads as one story, the events recorded in the Megillah actually took place over 13 years! The ups, the downs, the parts that seem to be unrelated, all come together to weave a story of salvation and is the cause of the boundless joy we experience each year on Purim.

One would think the proper way to celebrate a seemingly natural order of events would perhaps be a Seudah or reading of the Megillah – but why all the excess joy and celebration unlike any other Yom Tov on the Jewish calendar?

This might be the very reason. We typically categorize occurrences around us as either natural or miraculous. The story of Purim is both as well as neither. One moment it looks miraculous, the next it’s the usual unpredictable happenings at a kings court, and then again a G-dly wonder.

All this points to the essence of all being. Of the physical and the spiritual. The mundane and the holy. The Creator Himself. The celebration is therefore both spiritual and physical. Lofty and grounded in this world at the same time.

This experience is very much connected with the coming of Moshiach. His coming will be both a world changing spiritual experience as well as occur in the world we know and will be seen with our physical eyes. It follows that the best way to prepare is to raise our human experience and personal life to one filled with Torah learning, doing Mitzvos and random acts of goodness and kindness.

Wishing you a most joyous Purim and a wonderful Shabbos!

Shalom