Hide and Seek

Famous Jewish parable: Children playing hide-and-seek. One child in corner is weeping. Why are you crying? Because when I hide, no one comes looking for me.

Where will we have the Purim seudah this year? With or without corona masks? With or without family? These and many other concerns — Purim this year occurring on a Friday, necessitating the Purim seudah before the Shabbos seudah, intertwined with sending mishloach manos, hearing the Megillah, giving matanos l’evyonim, trying to fulfill ad delo yada properly, all while preparing for Shabbos — threaten to obscure the underlying message of Purim.

For Jerusalem and other Biblical walled cities like Jaffa, Tzefas, and Chevron, the busyness is magnified by this year’s Purim Meshulash, “triple Purim,” with Megillah reading Thursday night and Friday morning, al hanissim on Shabbos, and mishloach manos and seudah dinner on Sunday (see Esther 9:18). With all of this swirling through the atmosphere, the essence of Purim might easily fade away.

Purim is the quintessential neis nistar, hidden miracle, unlike Chanukah and its long-lasting cruse of oil, which is the epitome of neis nigleh, open miracle. The Purim story covers about a decade, from the lavish celebration at the beginning of Megillas Esther until the redemption at its end. Because of this stretch of time, one can easily overlook the hand of G-d that was orchestrating the “coincidences” that mark the story.