(Courtesy of SMGH) Purim this year marks the second anniversary of COVID-19, which was first reported as a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020. And we spent those two years in isolation avoiding contact with anybody who could be a carrier of COVID. “Doesn’t this sound strangely familiar?” asked George Matyjewicz, PhD, community liaison at St.
Purim for Our Time: The Therapeutic Joy of Purim By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, zt”l | February 24, 2021
The following is an excerpt from a Purim resource sent from the office of Rabbi Sacks, zt”l, as part of its ‘Ceremony & Celebration: Family Edition’ series, based on Rabbi Sacks’ teachings and writings.
There is a unique law in the approach to Purim. Mishe-nichnas Adar marbim be-simcha: “From the beginning of Adar, we increase in joy.” This is stated in the Talmud (Taanit 29a) and is based on the passage in the Megilla (Esther 9:21-22) in which Mordechai sends a letter throughout the land instructing all Jews “to observe the fourteenth day of the month of Adar and the fifteenth day, every year the days on which the Jews obtained rest from their enemies and the month which for them was turned from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday.”