The (un)Happy Purim

Adar is one tough month for me. I know that we’re all meant to be super-duper happy in Adar, but as soon as all the ‘happy’ songs start up, I kind of go into a spiritual slump – and this has been going on for years. Last year, I felt so spiritually stressed when Adar started, I had to book myself a last minute trip to Uman a few days’ before Purim. I came back relaxed – for 2 days, until another round of the rockets from Gaza started up, right after the festival.

The year before that, I was devastated by the murder of the Fogels in Adar, when an Arab terrorist broke in to their home and killed the parents and three of the kids in cold blood. The year before that, I think Adar was relatively quiet; the year before that, I was in the middle of my ‘year of fear’ and I’d just been to Uman for the first time, in Adar. That was the year that we had a massive rainstorm on Purim day in the Jerusalem region, which caused a massive flood in my house, which in turn made both my ovens fuse. I had guests coming from out of town for Purim Seuda (festive meal), and I couldn’t get the ovens to start working again to cook the meal (we improvised, badly…)
 
The year before that, one of my neighbor’s sons was killed, along with a bunch of other holy boys, in the horrible killing at Mercaz HaRav yeshiva on Rosh Chodesh Adar.
 
The year before that, we were moving to a new town the day after Purim, and I hadn’t packed a thing and was stressed to the max about it all at the Purim seudah (festive meal). And on my first Purim in Israel, I spent most of Adar ill with dysentery (who knew that disease still existed?!?), and the Purim seudah was the first time I’d gotten out of bed, or eaten solid food, for over a week.
 
So let’s just say that my track record for Adar to be ‘happy’ has not been very good, but usually by Purim, one way or another, G-d pulls me around, and I start to feel at least a little bit ‘merry’.
 
But that didn’t happen this year.
 
The last couple of years, I’ve been trying to ‘access’ the hidden light of Purim that can work amazing miracles for us if we can only tap into it, by doing a lot of praying. This year, like last year, I put a lot of effort into praying, because I really, really wanted some big miracles for me and other people. Usually when I pray, I feel great. But that didn’t happen this year. The more I prayed, the more ‘backwards’ I seemed to go. I tried to fix this problem by – you guessed it – praying more, but I could feel my ‘happiness’ unraveling with each passing minute.
 
Last year, I got up early Purim day, and tried to fit in a couple more hours of prayer before popping off to hear the megillah reading. I was already in a funny mood, but the megillah reading was the last straw. Let’s just say that there was a kid there with a drum set and cymbals who appeared to be auditioning for the Grateful Dead.
 
It was pure torture. The megillah reading took around an hour and a half and I needed the bathroom half-way through, and clearly couldn’t go. I was at the mercy of the kid in the fright wig who was trying to ‘obliterate’ Haman with some serious drum thrashing that seemed to last forever…
 
I came home so miserable. I tried to pray it away; I tried playing my bongo; I tried eating chocolate; I tried listening to ‘happy’ music – and then, the misery just kind of descended on me and I gave up trying to be happy, and I burst into tears.
 
I was bawling my eyes out for three hours straight – on the ‘happiest’ day of the year! I pulled the blinds down and hid upstairs, to avoid all the people who were dropping off the customary parcels of food.
 
What a mess! What a disaster! I had a Purim seudah to go to in an hour’s time, and I simply couldn’t pull myself together. I very nearly didn’t go. I looked terrible – really, like I’d been crying for hours – and the last thing I wanted to do was be around people. But I put on a brave face, and I went (half an hour late). The meal itself was actually OK. I was with close friends, and I didn’t have to talk very much. But by dessert, I could feel all the sadness welling up again, so I tried to bentch fast and run home.
 
As I was literally running out the door, one of my dearest friends showed up, and could see that I was in a big mess. She walked me home, and gave me a pep talk. I was feeling like such a failure – bawling uncontrollably, on Purim, of all days! But she told me something very profound, and very helpful.
 
She knew that I’d had what we’ll politely call an ‘interesting’ year, and that I’d been dealing with a lot of the fallout from all the ‘interesting’ things that have been going on, by not really dealing with it. It was too hard for me to manage; too upsetting; too distressing, so I’d been bottling it all up, and asking G-d to help me sort it all out in some other more ‘clinical’ way, that wouldn’t really involve me too much in the process.
 
Most of my marathon prayer sessions before and during Purim had been about resolving the ‘interesting’ circumstances I currently find myself in, because only a miracle can do it. But life doesn’t work like that, or at least, my life doesn’t work like that. We can’t just keep pretending that stuff that hurts us doesn’t; or that people who pain us, don’t; or that we’re ‘OK’ with things that on some level that we really aren’t ‘OK’ with.
 
On Purim, all my feelings about my ‘interesting’ life welled up in a massive, unstoppable, flood of tears. I was so upset that I was sad dafka on the happiest day of the year, but my friend told me something that put it in a whole new light:
 
G-d is cleaning you out. G-d is answering your prayers for a new start, by cleaning out all that horrible ‘ickness’ from the past. Once that stuff is out of your system, He can fill you up with such amazing, good, happy, holy things.
 
For the first time all day, I saw a ray of light. I went to bed very early, and when I got up the next morning, I felt fragile, but much, much better. I was talking to my husband, asking him why dafka G-d had to pick the happiest day of the year to make me so very sad, when he gave me another amazing insight:
 
I had such a mountain of repressed misery in me, I needed the ‘joy’ of Purim to handle it. If it had come out on any other less ‘happy’ day, it would have been much, much worse. I probably would have been on the floor for months, from the aftermath.
 
Hmmm.
 
When we’re in the middle of a test, it all seems so dark. We can start to have all sorts of questions about ‘why’ Hashem is doing what He’s doing to us. On Purim, I had a good half an hour where I simply couldn’t understand why G-d was gearing me up to be a social outcast again, on the most sociable day of the year. What, He couldn’t have done it some other day when the kids were in school, and I wouldn’t be wearing fancy dress, invited to a meal with three other families and answering the door all day to friends and neighbors!?!?
 
Apparently not.
 
I needed the ‘joy’ of Purim to deal with my mountain of sadness. Prayers do get answered; requests are responded to; miracles do happen. But G-d has His own way of dealing with things, and His own blueprint for what needs to happen, and why. If I tried to work out or understand my Purim last year, I simply couldn’t. All I can do is trust that G-d is doing what’s best for me; that He loves me a lot; and that being incredibly sad on the ‘happiest’ day of the year is going to lead to some incredible things for me.
 
 
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You’re welcome to write Rivka Levy at rivkawritesback@gmail.com.