Dear Friends,
Rosh Chodesh Nissan is around the corner! I am writing this letter on Sunday, and Tuesday is the Big Day!
When you look at this day from a historical perspective three major events that can almost tear your heart open with joy. In so many ways it’s the best day of the year.

IT’S THE DAY THAT IT ALL STARTED
1-There is an argument in the Talmud about when the world was created, the first of Nissan or the first of TIshrei. Rosh Hashanah is the first of TIshrei, which implies that we don’t relate to the first of Nissan as being the beginning of it all. There is another take; the first of TIshrei was the day of actualization.   Hashem conceived of creating a world on the first of Nissan. Later, in TIshrei, it moved beyond being just a plan- it became what we call “reality”. Hashem’s decision to make a world involved far more than bringing the planet into existence. It means that He made a place in which human beings would exist. They would have the power to choose good over evil and bring light to dark places.. The Akeidas Yitzchak, one of the early commentators, opens your eyes to all of what this implies. Choosing freely means that there is a fifty /fifty chance of making the wrong choice. Inevitably that means that the plan included human failure. It also means that there is somewhere to go when failure occurs, which is inescapable. Tshuvah was created before the world became a concrete reality in order to make the victory of good over evil a real possibility.
What that means to you, is that Nissan is the beginning!!
 
THE FIRST MITZVAH GIVEN TO KLAL YISRAEL
2-This is reflected by the mitzvah of consecrating the new moon. G-d commanded the Jews to acknowledge Nissan as the head of all of the months of the year. The word for month in Hebrew is “chodesh”, which shares a root with the word “chiddush” which means something novel. Each month has the potential to bring something into the world that has never yet been actualized. The way the world itself opens up to new beginnings at this time of year is a physical manifestation of what is going on spiritually. This mitzvah (consecrating the new moon), is the first mitzvah that we were given as a people. The moon itself is one of the symbols of who we are as a people. It constantly changes, and is always headed towards renewal, unlike the sun which is static.
What that means to you, is that Nissan is the time of our birth as a people, and has within it the secret of our rebirth.

BRINGING HASHEM’S PRESENCE INTO THE REAL WORLD
3-Once the Jews left Egypt, they were headed towards self-definition. They knew who they weren’t, and who they didn’t want to be. They knew that Hashem exists, is with them, and is not limited by the laws of nature that He created. The process of self- discovery began with the 49 days of wandering before they received the Torah. These days were purposeful. They had to relearn their original identity by reaching inward and coming back into contact with the traits that make us Jews. The way this happened wasn’t through conventional Tshuvah in which you identify the blockage and force it aside. It was by discovering the latent good within us and giving it a voice. The next step was being really ready to receive the Torah.  Even that, the most significant day that ever will happen, isn’t the final step towards our self-actualization. Building a sanctuary to Hashem to bring His presence to each of us and from there to the entire world was the next step in the process. The sanctuary had two rooms. One was called. “Holy” and the other was referred to as “Holy of Holies”. The first room had the menorah, the golden sacred table, and the incense alter within it. Only kohanim were allowed entrance. The inner room had only the ark with the tablets of the law. No one was allowed to enter other than the Kohein Gadol on Yom Kippur. Its tznius (innerness, concealment from anything that can be construed as public) is what granted it its sacred nature. The specifications of how to build the sanctuary were extremely detail oriented, required huge amounts of precious metals. The “how to” and the “what exactly” are the topics that are under discussion in several parshas. It all concludes with Rosh Chodesh. On the first of Nissan 2949 (the second year of the Jews journey in the desert), the mishkan was completed. A cloud of has Hashem’s presence hovered over it. It was very much the day of becoming ourselves.
 
BE A BABY
How do you bring this home to your real life? You are like a new baby, and there are three things that babies can teach you:
1-They are active! It’s time to start doing
2-They cry till they get what they want. Keep praying!!!
3-When they get what they want, they are happy. They don’t just move on to the next item on the wish list!

Chodesh Tov!!!
Tziporah 

Dear Friends,
Purim is around the corner!

Just knowing that things can turn upside down in a moment, is so antithetical to the self-reliant arrogance that you find idealized in society... How do you keep the Big Plan in mind when you are barely able to let go long enough to feel that you can allow yourself to stop your impulsive need to keep controlling the small things that come your way today?

DON’T TRY TO FIGURE OUT THE END OF THE STORY UNLESS YOU READ THE BEGINNING.

One of the most interesting things about Purim is that the story’s beginning isn’t so easy to trace. The first time that we were forced out of Israel led to an exile took us to Babylon. Later when Babylon was conquered by Persia, the rules of the game changed.  Achashveirosh ascended the Persian throne, and in three short years after his reign began, the Purim story commenced. The real beginning of the story took place, however, when we were still in Babylon, way before the Persian rule had much of an impact upon us. The Babylonian ruler, Nebuchadnezzar, demanded that everyone must bow to him (and to the image that he wore as part of his campaign of self-deification). The vast majority of the Jews did what they felt that they had to do to survive - they bowed.  (Nebuchadnezzar had an orchestra play, and anyone within his radius had to bow even if that meant leaving their home.) Anyone on the outside may have seen the throngs of Jews bowing to Nebuchadnezzar as the death toll of our nationhood. The conventional definitions of nationhood were fast fading. We no longer had a common land, would lose our language as Aramaic became more familiar to us then Hebrew, and would soon find our culture melding with the prevalent culture of the people around us.
 
Hashem knows us better than we know ourselves, and from that vantage point  saw that we were still ourselves in the deepest and most authentic sense. He showed the prophet Yechezkiel a vision. In the vision Yechezkiel was in the Dura valley, where the Jews had just bowed down to Nebuchadnezzar. He saw dry bones rising from the ground and coming to life. This told him more than words ever could about the way the Jewish people ultimately will always survive; no matter how moribund our faith is and how many persecutions seem to doom us to collective extinction. We would survive, but then…

…WE FAILED AGAIN

Years later, when Babylon had fallen, Achashveirosh ruled as king of Persia. He made a feast. Nothing new there, Persian kings seem to have a penchant for self-aggrandizement. This feast, however celebrated a very special event. He understood the prophecies about the Jewish return to their land to have come and go. In celebration of our doom as a unique nation, he threw a party to end all parties. There  was a façade of religious tolerance, but the intent was to relegate any sense of future that we had to the dust bin of history.
Almost everyone came.

He gave Haman enormous power soon thereafter. Haman’s decree was less draconian than Nebuchadnezzar’s.

The rest of the story is too well known to review, but there is just one more detail that bears repeating. When we had almost lost hope, everything changed.

FAILURE DOESN’T MEAN DEFEAT

This doesn’t mean that you have to lose hope in order to be saved from whatever devils you are dealing with. It means that Hashem can and will save you whether or not you deserve it. For you to appreciate Purim, you have to appreciate the fact that you are alive, and that Hashem’s direct intervention which was the result of his believing in us far, far more than we have any right to believe in ourselves. This took us to the events of thousands of years ago. Everything turned around. What makes this more meaningful is that we actually figured it out. Unlike the response to the many miracles that Hashem has shown us and continues to show us, they knew what to do. They gave. To the poor. To their friends. They gave because they felt that they had so much to give and to They put their faith in Hashem, and didn’t allow themselves to be either guilt ridden after they did tshuvah (which is a cause of continued anxiety), or afraid to give just for the sake of giving, without having to justify themselves.

THE MORE YOU FEEL JOY, THE MORE YOU WILL FEEL STILL MORE JOY!
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At least for the day, let go of feeling deprived. Recognize all that you have! And, most of all, Purim Sameach!!
 
P.S. Mazal tov to our wonderful Toby Rosenblum!
Love,
Tziporah