From The Desk of Rabbi Yehuda

You’ve seen it but do you feel it?

There’s a huge disparity between what we know and how we feel which extends to what we feel and what we do about it. 

It’s really counterintuitive. One would assume it’s like changing gears. Knowledge creates feeling which in turn compels action. 

If only it was so simple. Or perhaps it is so simple!

Purim — yes Purim (mistakenly thought of as a child’s holiday ) is the Holiday that shakes it all up. Turns the regular order of things on its head removing lethargy and dependency on predictable order. 

The actual historical story reads better than a novel — twists and turns, intrigue and suspense, galore. The only thing is, it’s not someone else’s story it’s actually our story — better yet — it’s our cue to shake ourselves out of our intellectual rut. To suspend regular order just as our ancestors did as they recognized and connected with the higher order of life. 

Indeed intellect doesn’t play a role on Purim just as our survival can’t be rationally and intellectually explained. We dress up not to conceal the real us rather to reveal the real us. For after all, we aren’t our dress and we aren’t all those masks that we put in front of ourselves the whole year around. 

Come to think of it, perhaps it’s all year round that we are dressing up!

Mixed up? Great — that’s the point. G-d runs the world. We intellectually know that but Purim tells us “shake it up”, don’t get caught in your own web of intransigence. Feel it. Do something about it. 

Don’t feel it? Well, celebrate it you will be one step closer to feeling for sure!

From sundown tonight to sundown tomorrow — we hear the Megillah ( twice), exchange food gifts with others, give charity to the poor and eat a festive meal. By doing so we not only accord honor and respect to our heroic leaders and brethren of the past— we create the most glorious future for ourselves and our families. 

Happy Purim and Shabbat Shalom.