RebbetzinHeller's blog

 What is being happy really about? Is it just celebrating that “they tried to kill us? God saved us. Let’s eat” formula that we all know and love? Purim can be far more than that. The trick is to take your inner life along with your delight in the food, camaraderie, and feeling that things will work out in the end. What is the message that Purim has for your soul?

 Why do we even think twice about it? In ancient times it was the watermark of determining the age of a tree for various ritual purposes, but today there really isn’t much to focus on if you see reality through pragmatic lenses.

Yosef’s brothers didn’t recognize him. It is hardly a wonder, when you realize that 22 years passed since the last time that they had seen each other. Yosef as ruler of Egypt certainly had little resemblance to the 17-year-old youth who they neither were really willing to hear or to see when they sold him to a caravan of merchants headed for destination unknown.

Are You a Closet Hellenist?

The Greeks centered their opposition to the Jews on three religious laws that one the surface of things couldn’t be less threatening to them or their way of life. Why would a Greek concern himself about someone else circumcising his son? If a neighbor likes having three rather lavish meals on Saturday after attending the synagogue why let it occupy space in your mind? The most puzzling was their antagonism towards consecrating the new moon, a religious ceremony that had no observable impact other than being the basis of the Jewish calendar. Can you imagine losing any sleep over when Ramadan comes out next year?

It isn’t always easy to figure out who you want to be when you grow up. When you were a kid, the answer to the perennial question always was that you wanted to be whatever you idealized. Do you still remember wanting to be an astronaut or a firefighter? How many of you wanted to be an investment broker or a kosher butcher? Odds are that none of you wanted to recreate yourselves in that specific image.
You are grown up now. You are, however not dead. The possibility of moving on, being more than you are right now is still real.

There are two kinds of simchah. One is the vivid, transient, engaging joy that the animal soul is addicted to. It propels us to almost constant movement towards whatever the next moment offers (note, not this moment; its enemy is the present and its friend is the future). One of my friends was telling me about what people sometimes refer to as “their former lives”, meaning the way they were before real growth was even a possibility.

Once there was a man who died. A tree began to grow in the cemetery over his grave. Its roots penetrated the soft earth, and found their resting place deep within his remains. As they grew, they nurtured the tree as they drew their sustenance from his body, and the tree they nurtured grew into a tall and noble specimen.

There is one thing that we all have in common. That is that when the moment comes when we have to face up to who we are and what we have chosen to become, there is only one question that is really relevant. It is, “Did you fight the right battles”.