Purim and Simcha during COVID

A year ago on the Jewish calendar, our world turned upside-down. We expected this to a certain degree. The month of Adar that brings in the celebration of Purim, is a month that commemorates the euphoria of the overturning of a death sentence when Haman is hung on the gallows he built for us. “Vehanofochu”-- upside-downness -- is the theme of the day.

Last year’s Adar, however, was also accompanied by another turning upside-down. As before a hurricaneor snowstorm, people hoarded toilet paper, prescriptions, food and water and listened to the news of the mysterious virus coming closer and closer to our shores. The last large gathering my family attended in 2020 was the Megillah reading. When Naomi and I each took our turn to read aloud to the congregation, we watched our friend sanitizing the yad, the small pointer used to help us keep our spot while chanting aloud the story of Esther and her triumph, a tiny gesture that would be magnified in the coming weeks as we learned to wipe down everything we touched.

The next day at school was costume day. Administrators filled the day with programming for the students while we teachers met in panicked meetings, deciding what assignments to send home. The Jewish day schools were waiting for the final say on whether we’d go on lock down, no one knowing how long. It could be a week or two, maybe more, we were told, and we quickly copied papers and stuffed them into folders for our students. There was an online program called Zoom we would be using to direct our students towards their work. We were offered a video to help us learn its features.

How little we knew about the changes coming. Since that time, the entire world has learned new ways of living, adjusted to changes in our life and has adopted the annoying catchphrase “new normal.” In my own school we taught out the remainder of the school year on Zoom, and my family mourned the cancelation of summer camp and visits to both sets of grandparents. We nested at home, learned how to function online, set a new rhythm of visiting friends outdoors and made decisions about what outings were safe enough, or warranted risk, or weren’t important anymore.

My colleagues, friends, and I have all been coping with this in different ways. For me, I’m fine most of the time, until I’m not, and sometimes have just shut down thoroughly in a state of trauma, becoming distracted or tired suddenly the way I did after the day, years ago, when my house was broken into, or like the time I was attacked by a dog.

In this month of Adar, when we are asked to express joy, there are some who just aren’t feeling it. I know it feels phony, sometimes, to smile when there is so much pain, uncertainty, and fear. It’s not uncommon to hear the metaphor of wearing an actor’s mask — showing the world your happy face while inside you only feel a frown.

Purim, though, celebrates the wearing of masks and turns it into something holy. We wear costumes that have the potential to translate a part of our inner selves into the language of the outside world for all to see. If we show what is inside of us, it is entirely possible we will show our pain. However, isn’t it also possible that the smile we’ve been showing on the outside, could also then be directed inwards and, with the fire of true joy, actually ignite something so that true joy is on the inside too?

Happiness and joy are not the same. Happiness is a feeling that implies everything going right and us being grateful for all that is good. Joy — simcha — is about something that is more nuanced and deeper. Joy is the realization from deep in the gut that the world still is, regardless of anything that has come in the way. A simcha, besides meaning joy, is the name for a celebration — a wedding, a birth, a bar or bat mitzvah. These days inevitably include some sense of loss… the ancestors who aren’t there to celebrate with us, the knowledge that this day comes only once, the wisdom in knowing that none of us will live forever and that’s precisely why this moment matters. One Simchat Torah — a day whose very name is about simcha — I danced with the Torah on behalf of my friend who I knew was dying. I dance with the Torah every year, but that year it meant more. Sorrow + the continuation of life’s cycles = Simcha.

There is no contradiction in celebrating during a pandemic or in being commanded to find joy on the day that might have marked our destruction. In this year, many have died and all of us have suffered. This is the very thing that will make us sing louder, pray harder and dance more.