They’re Gonna Try to Kill Us Again; Let’s Be Joyful Anyway

Rabbi Nikki DeBlosi (she/her)
3 min readFeb 5, 2021

What’s this next Jewish holiday about? It’s what they’re all about: They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.

The upcoming holiday of Purim has an even stronger message of resilience, though. In fact, we begin to anticipate it, practicing our capacity for joy in the face of tragedy and resilience despite historical trauma, as soon as we enter the Hebrew month in which it falls, Adar. Linking this topsy-turvy Adar holiday of a failed plot to destroy the Jewish people to the actual destruction of the Jerusalem Temple marked during the month of Av, the rabbis taught:

Just like as soon as Av has entered, we decrease in happiness, so too as soon as Adar has entered, we increase in joy (simcha). (Babylonian Talmud Taanit 29a)

כשם שמשנכנס אב ממעטין בשמחה כך משנכנס אדר מרבין בשמחה

Why increase in joy as the days until the reliving of an experience of attempted genocide decrease? What’s joyful about gathering the whole clan together, elders to infants, and saying, Let us in great detail recall the story of a jealous and powerful enemy, an ordinary man with too much power, who tried to facilitate our mass murder at the hands of our neighbors.

Brene Brown considers joy the “most terrifying” human emotional experience. In our scarcity-mentality…

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Rabbi Nikki DeBlosi (she/her)

queer belonging. sex positivity. creative ritual. inclusive judaism.