Purim Hangover

Given all that has happened over the past month and the reminders that I feel every morning, the joy of Purim was a welcomed respite from the daily worries and work. Having taken the holiday off, I was able to finally take some time away from the office without anything that needed to be done during the day. While we have plans for future years marking the celebration of the day with our son and the community this year there were no such plans made. Right now, sometimes the greatest joy can be found in not having to do something or be somewhere.

However, we were able to take advantage of the day as my wife was also off from work and, for the first time in too long, we had a quite lunch. Just the two of us as we brought our son to the daycare that morning. Thankfully, the new sushi place that we had found was actually pretty good and we were able to relax for the afternoon just spending an uneventful meal together. We made sure to take separate cars to the restaurant so that I could run some errands (rarely do I have time to do these during the week) and my wife could pick up our son on time. Nice to have a few things done early so we aren’t running around throughout the weekend.

When I returned home our son eagerly scurried across the floor not expecting to see me for another few hours. That smile and that laugh still get to me. After washing up and holding our son for a few moments and giving him plenty of hugs, it was time to simply get on the floor and spend some time as a family. This is the pure joy that this day has brought to us. Obviously not in the usual way but it is the joy of family and the unconditional love for a child, an open willingness to give or give up anything for them, that drives the meaning of this day home.

Since then there has been a bit of a Purim hangover. While neither of us had to return to work the following day and our son was home with us, there is something different about the extra bonus time that we have together. Maybe it is because of the simple fact that I was personally reflecting on the holiday during the waking hours but it was a different day. This Purim, the freedom and joy of this day, is something that we can build upon and truly make the meaning and joy of this holiday a part of our son’s life and faith. Hopefully without the hangover.

Can You Smell The Hamentashen?

I just realized earlier today as I was thinking about this post that I haven’t written about Purim for a few years. The last time I wrote about this joyous Jewish holiday was at a completely different point in my life as my wife and I were in the midst of the Aliyah process. Obviously there were different things on my mind and events surrounding our life but much of the post remains relevant even with things having changed so drastically over the years.

In fact, it is rather poignant given the speech that we heard yesterday and what is happening in the region as I write these words. So instead of trying to write the same thing over again, I am simply going to include most of that blog content below. After all, we still need to make some noise!

The joyous, and sometimes raucous, celebration is a community act. No one acts alone. Everyone works together and supports each other, to turn the voices of many into one to make one collective noise.

However, beyond these community gatherings of support and joy, the voice of the Jewish people is shattered. I am not talking about the differences between the Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, etc. communities but of a more fundamental and deeper chasm… supporting Israel.

Purim is a time when we should recognize what we can do as a people. We can’t just sit around and stuff ourselves with Hamentashen, we must rally to support our homeland, we must speak with one voice, we must stomp our feel and blot out the accusations being made against our home. Whether it is by writing, by praying, by making Aliyah, make your voice heard!

We all need to regularly show our admiration for those who live in the land that G-d has granted to us, support for those in the IDF who protect us and defend our right to exist as a people and our right to a homeland, and respect for the holy men who pray for us all and carry on the traditions that many take for granted.

We live many different kinds of lives but we are one people with one home. We all want peace and we will all fight for peace because no one should live in a home being torn apart by conflict or partitions. We must ensure that we will not be cast out into the Diaspora again to be gripped with the longing to return and the inability to do so. We need to ensure that we and all our future generations have a place to call home! We need to make some noise!

Avoiding Modern Art On The Asphalt

I remember the Salem days!

As the years have passes I have become less and less a fan of the morbid sugar filled celebration that fills this frigid evening. And, as I have said before, while I have a number of memories about this evening when growing up, I can’t recall ever anticipating this day with much fervor as many of the people around me. It was always more of an excuse to be out late at night and get a big bag of candy… given my size when growing up that carried much more weight than it should have. However, one thing I do remember is not being an idiot like many of the kids around me by running into the street despite the headlights.

Over the years, both in my maturation and my growing devotion to my faith (albeit in a variety of different ways), the minimal enthusiasm that I had for the day has dwindled to the point of complete indifference to the day. Honestly, the most that I have celebrated this day is in the words that I have written on this blog and looking up the history of the day on Wikipedia. For those of you who are also curious, here is a little bit of that listing:

Halloween or Hallowe'en, a contraction of "All Hallows' Evening", also known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve, is a yearly celebration observed in a number of countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It initiates the triduum of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed believers. Within Allhallowtide, the traditional focus of All Hallows' Eve revolves around the theme of using "humor and ridicule to confront the power of death."

According to many scholars, All Hallows' Eve is a Christianized feast initially influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, with possible pagan roots, particularly the Gaelic Samhain. Other scholars maintain that it originated independently of Samhain and has solely Christian roots.

Typical festive Halloween activities include trick-or-treating (or the related "guising"), attending costume parties, decorating, carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted house attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories and watching horror films. In many parts of the world, the Christian religious observances of All Hallows' Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead, remain popular, although in other locations, these solemn customs are less pronounced in favor of a more commercialized and secularized celebration. Because many Western Christian denominations encourage, although most no longer require, abstinence from meat on All Hallows' Eve, the tradition of eating certain vegetarian foods for this vigil day developed, including the consumption of apples, colcannon, cider, potato pancakes, and soul cakes.

So, for those of you that enjoy this day (especially the night) have a blast. Just don’t dart out into the street without looking as I have already come too close to making modern art on the asphalt in recent years. As for me, I think I will wait for Purim to dress up and ask strangers for candy.