Purim 2020
In our era the glue which used to hold families together, interconnect members of communities, and unite nations, is dissolving. I do not believe the Coronavirus is the cause of these ailments, but these hard times hold up a mirror to us. Worldwide catastrophes exerts pressure, testing the bonds we may have thought were there, pulling the threads of the cloth we took for granted as a backdrop to our lives.
In some ways, of course, we are more connected. My extended family, like so many, holds a Zoom meeting every few weeks and relatives in different states and countries can see each other and talk and reconnect. Every few months some new social media app rears its head and promises to create virtual communities, friendship, love and belonging. But the promising app that is blowing up today will be next year’s old hat, having failed to be the elixir promised by its developers. So what does a unity strong enough to impact lives and change societies look like? And once we identify it how do we achieve it?
This week we will celebrate the holiday of Purim, which is a holiday that comes to teach precisely this. What is Haman’s accusation of the Jewish people? - “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples…” We were scattered, disunified, spread among the Persian Empire, trying, the Rabbis say, to fit in and to assimilate. To adhere not to each other, but to the nations. Haman though was not fooled, he knew who we were. The secret to Jewish survival is owning our identity as one nation, and being unified. Disunity and assimilation will never succeed. The secret to Jewish success is Jewish unity. When there is hatred among us, and distance between us, there is exile and persecution.
Esther, for whom the Megillah is named, understands this, and commands the Jewish people first to join together - men, women and children - and to fast for three days. I think the message is an important one, the first thing to know about unity is that it takes personal sacrifice. It can not be achieved as an abstract national undertaking, it takes individual people, giving something up for the greater good, to achieve real unity.
Following this first step of self sacrifice, is seeing the other as our family. The giving of mishloach manot and of matanot l’evyonim, gifts of food to each other and charity to the needy, is halachically a way of ensuring everyone has a festive Purim meal. But it's not just that everyone eats a meal. We are all eating each other’s meals, and eating from and with each other, we become like one family. Human beings must have obligated, person to person connections, which involve giving and self sacrifice in order to achieve unity. A world of me and my own success will never do. We need a world in which the greatest honor is to serve another and to be interconnected.
