“I didn’t like that story”, one young student announced after hearing a relatively mild version of the Esther story. This week, we celebrated Rosh Chodesh, the beginning of the new month of Adar, and when I asked students if they knew what month was beginning, one raised an enthusiastic hand to say, “Purim!” Adar is thought of as a happy month, because it contains the holiday of Purim, with its costumes, masks, carnivals and treats. But as my student pointed out, the story is scary, and though it ends well for the Jews, it is a story of hate and violence, of living an insecure life as a minority in a culture easily led toward intolerance.
The scroll of Esther’s inclusion as a holy book was a matter of debate by the rabbis, in large part because God is never directly mentioned in the book. The rabbis concluded that there are several veiled references to the Divine, and that God must have played a role in the miraculous rescue of the Jewish people. The rabbis see God reflected in the repetition of the word hamelech, the king, even though on its surface it refers to King Ahasuerus. And they see God in Mordechai’s entreaty to Esther that if she does not act, salvation will come from makom acher, another place, (hamakom, The Place, being a name for God).
I want to suggest that God is found not only in these veiled references, but also in the response of Esther and Mordechai to their victory. When they declare the holiday of Purim for all time, it is as a day, not only of feasting and joy, but also of sending treats to friends and gifts to the poor. In their commemoration of their defeat of their enemies, they create a means for building community and taking care of the vulnerable. Though the holiday and its customs are declared by human beings, they make room for God’s work in the celebration.
This Purim, our Hitah and Dvash classes are hosting a mitzvah project fair. Each student has chosen a project to benefit other people, society, or the world. They have planned many details of how they will make a small difference, studied their causes, the mitzvot that relate to them, and Jewish texts to support their personal passion to help. And they have each explored how to involve the MWJDS community in the projects they have devised. Each brings something of themselves to their project, and shares it with our community and with those their project supports. The Mitzvah Project Fair is being held on Purim intentionally, as an opportunity for the community to engage in matanot la’evyonim, gifts to the poor, one of the four key mitzvot of Purim.
I am excited to share a sneak preview of the Mitzvah Fair projects through this website that Hitah and Dvash has created and will continue to update over the next week. Here you can read about the projects they have devised and learn how they are asking us to participate and contribute. I encourage parents of all students to take a look at the GET INVOLVED page and consider sending your students with some money or other supplies that to contribute at the fair, and to come yourself if you are able.
This week is a particularly appropriate week to begin thinking about the community’s participation in the Hitah and Dvash Mitzvah Project Fair, not only because Purim will soon be here, but also because we are reading Parshat Trumah, the part of the Torah where God tells Moses to request donations for the construction of the mishkan, the tabernacle, the portable holy space that the people will use throughout their time in the desert. There is an overwhelming outpouring of support for the project, with materials of all kinds brought out of the generosity of the people’s hearts.
Most of the parsha consists of instructions for constructing the furniture, but close to the beginning of the parsha is one of my favorite verses in the Torah (Ex. 25:8) “v’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham, let them build me a holy space, and I will dwell among them.” This verse, though it literally refers to the structure that was built and used in the desert, came to be understood creatively by later rabbis who lived after the time of the Holy Temple. In the absence of a central Temple, Jewish homes, synagogues, schools, and dinner tables, came to be understood as mikdash me’at, mini-Holy-spaces. If we create room for holiness within our lives, then, the verse promises, the Divine will dwell among and within us.
As important as the physical construction of the space was to our ancestors in the desert, creating space (physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually) for holiness and holy work feels, somehow, even more pressing in our time, when, like in the book of Esther, God’s presence is veiled. It is through our response to the suffering we see in the world, and to our own good fortune, that we can create holy space in our lives and in our community. I look forward to following our students’ lead in creating that space together with you on Purim. Please preview their projects and come support them Purim morning.
Mishenichnas Adar Marbin B’simcha – When Adar arrives, we increase our joy. May we be inspired and uplifted by the passions and initiative of the upcoming generation.
Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov!