It's Rosh Chodesh Adar🤡

It's Rosh Chodesh Adar.

Purim is an interesting time. In the megila it says that it was designated for future years as a yom tov.

But we know a yom tov as a day that the melachos are not allowed. So why are melachos allowed on Purim? The halachic basis is that Purim was declared by Rabbanim and therefore is not as strong a Yom Tov was the ones written in the Torah.

But there's another reason. Purim is a holiday in which we celebrate Hashem being brought into the hidden places of our life. As we go about driving and cooking and talking on the phone, we are bringing Hashem into our lives. It's not that we're stopping, going into a spiritual sukkah and connecting to Hashem, it's that we're cultivating a relationship with Hashem in our daily melachos. That's one of the reasons it doesn't say Hashem's name in the megilah. Because Purim is not a time that we pause and connect to Hashem, Purim is a time that we try to integrate Hashem seamlessly into our lives.

I found this very apropos for us frum ladies. It's a hectic season coming up for us. There is the preparations for Purim, Purim itself, Purim cleanup, and then without pausing to breathe, right into Pesach cleaning.

But this is the message for us. It's true that it's a hectic and overwhelming time and the to-do lists just keep growing. But that's how it's meant to be. Purim is the time that we're meant to bring Hashem into our cars, our telephones and our cooking. Purim is the time we recognize that although the story of our lives seems so random, seem like a string of happenstances, Hashem is writing the megila in a way that we need to put in the effort to see Him in our daily lives. 

It's a game of Hide and Seek.

Let's Write!1. Make a list of 10 things you need to do from now till Purim. Don't think into it, just write.

2. Go back to each one, write a line to yourself how you'd feel about it, if you knew that the point of this action was to connect to Hashem, or to do ratzon Hashem, in this action.

3. Read it all over and then write a reflection in a form of a letter to yourself to read on Purim in which you approached the preparations in a totally different way and how you'd feel on Purim because of it.

Wishing you a joyful and meaningful Chodesh Adar!!

Yocheved