The Shabbat Show - Episode 45: Purim Edition

[Music] oh [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] me [Music] and hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the shabbat show special edition it's purim what an incredible incredible time of year this is really something that is beyond words beyond moments beyond this world purim is the greatest holiday in the world as you know every holiday so wonderful but each one has special in its own way and happy perm to everybody who's here with us tonight hope everyone's having an incredible time if you had the opportunity to go hear the magilla uh awesome if not please do it in your home open up read the story read it in english read it in any language you want it is a special mitzvah special obligation a special opportunity no matter where you are no matter your background no matter your denomination it doesn't matter wherever you are jews from all over the world sharing this story and sharing this miracle if you can celebrate in any which way it's amazing it's an honor to be with you again in the show and this is a special show this is about purim now i know you're gonna have parties and you're able to watch videos of people doing flips and you know rabbis dancing and we're not gonna we're gonna have a little bit of that but not so much in the show the goal for this show really is to get underneath purim a little bit it's to try to see the value the relevance um what it means to us there's a lot of fun in purim and we don't need to add to the fun we'll have some fun but the goal of the show for tonight which i'm so excited about is to show the relevance the majesty the holiness of a day that seems pretty secular so i'm excited with you right now the show of course is sponsored as always as the program of the carl you know at goldman sent to the jewish values we think jay goldman for sponsorship before we begin just a couple of quick announcements mind flex check it out this week tuesday nights are by stephen bars and wednesday night is rabbi josh brody and and on sunday there's an israel virtual tour with david sussman the golan heights at 10 am let's jump in right away and understand what this is all about and what purim is really all about you know one of the greatest mistakes that we make is how we understand spirituality for many spirituality is the negation of physical people that are spiritual don't engage in this world they don't think like us they don't have our desires they don't chase the things we chase they don't live in this world and when you think of somebody who is spiritual we think of it as they are there if you think of the world of spiritual we think it heaven is up spirituality holiness god these are all concepts that we seem that seem to be far from us that we aspire to but don't really feel like if you look at this schedule of holidays and you ask yourself how would i rank them in measure of holiness where would purim rank right where would young kipper rank number one no like does it get holier than trying to be an angel you wearing white no eating no drinking we don't wear shoes we pray very poor rank last like wouldn't it like don't you feel like perm is like the recess the recess period of holidays like god's like listen you guys worked really hard in september and i know and i appreciate that and you know in a month from now you're not gonna have bread and that's pretty hard and i make you sit in a booth and you know what how about i give you one like i'll give you like recess you know you go play in the art so you know just run around and drink and eat and find a way to stuff more fat and carbs and feel like you're getting mixed with foreign day off well the arizon one of the holiest men ever to walk the faces earth says actually in the rankings of holiness you know where pearl lies number one you know what the secret how you know because yum kipper which is you would think was number one is really short for yom kippurim and in hebrew yom kippuram if you translate it literally is a day like pearl there's something about purim that makes it the holiest day of the year what we're going through which you we are just beginning a day that is holier in some respects than young kipper how is that possible so we're going to talk about it on the show we're going to learn about it on the show we're going to learn about some of its customs we're going to learn about some of its historical pieces we're going to hear some songs but i wanna share with you maybe a perspective which is the spiritual world is not what it seems and god's playbook has changed when you think about purim ask yourself what's the lesson what do i gain out of purim what is the what is it trying to teach me because when you get purim now you're reading god's playbook purim is much more than just a day on the calendar when we eat and remember a story from a long time ago and on the show we're going to bring this out a little bit but let's begin by having a little bit of fun and of course um there's a great video that i saw years ago when it first came out that i really enjoyed jordan appreciates from the the group the maccabeats check out their song [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] miserable it's ironic what came after he didn't know a girl named esther [Music] we will never be never be anything [Music] yours [Music] the streets were filled with celebration everyone ate hamentashen jubilation for the nation [Music] we will never be never be anything [Music] just come on and come [Music] so on your costumes on make noise [Music] can i help you guys i heard there was a party here man i think you have the wrong house [Music] important come on in [Applause] [Music] is [Music] we will never be [Music] just come on and that was the maccabeats raise your glass if you seek out in hidden places right in front of you you will never be anything but proud to tell the story story of purim is the ability to seek out in hidden places the story of purim tells us a lot more it's not right in front of our faces but we seek it out it's the challenge it's the responsibility of jews to clean their glasses and look for gods in the hidden places before we continue on i want to share with you an incredible interview that i had you know purim is a time of lots and lots of food of course and we have all these foods that we eat and we sort of like know that they come from like something jewish you know like we sort of get that somebody we beat somebody and then we eat but we don't really know how and what like this wonderful opportunity to catch up with dr yvette alt miller to talk about the foods that we eat on purim dr miller lives her family in chicago and has lectured internationally on jewish topics her book angels at the table a practical guide to celebrating shabbat takes readers through the rituals of shabbat and more explaining the full beauty the filled beautiful spectrum of jewish tradition with warmth and humor it has been praised as life-changing a modern and a modern classic used in classes and discussion groups around the world i had a chance to catch up with dr miller to talk about the various foods that i knew of and that i never have heard of before that all relate to perm check this out dr miller welcome to the show and happy purim to you happy purim thank you thank you so much for joining us um and i know that you're so busy with the holiday everything going on so purim is a day that is it's so fun filled it's so all over the place you're running and going and we do things all the time and sometimes we just don't realize the the history the meaning behind the things we do so we have foods we've got customs let me begin by asking you what is your favorite food or customer about purim well food is such an important part of purim um we give mishloch gifts of food to our friends and then of course we have a sudan purim a big festive meal to celebrate the day and i think like a lot of people um my favorite purim food is hamantaschen this is mine i brought i've already started baking and uh there are a lot of different fillings in hamantaschen obviously uh my favorite uh that's what these are is um is poppy seed uh a lot of people think that hamantaschen um uh is is called hamantashen just because it recalls hamad i know a lot of people say that the uh the triangular shape of a hamantaschen reminds them of uh haman's hat um in yiddish actually hamentashen means hummon's pockets so a long time ago we made fun of him on you know in that way um and uh there's also another reason we have this cookie uh hamontash and to celebrate purim uh in yiddish man which means [ __ ] seed sounds a lot like hamad so there was that pun as well when people first started making hamantaschen in europe there's a lot of food symbolism on purim some of it has to do with destroying hamad you know like when you go to uh shul on purim and you listen to the megillah megillah esther that tells the story of purim every time we hear haman's name we all say boo or we wave groggers to blot out his name so there's a tension there on one hand we have to remember haman obviously um he was a descendant of the tribe of amalek and it's a it's a biblical um uh mitzvah a commandment to always remember how cruel they were um how they tried to destroy the jewish people so we can never forget but at the same time uh we also do want to sort of blot out his name so when we eat something that is named after him on like a hamantash in like his pocket or his hat it's sort of uh it's sort of a way of destroying him interesting um some other no interesting how i just love that i'll tell you why it's so jewish to be like hey how are we gonna deliver him let's just eat it like you know say like no don't stomp don't destroy no no don't do that i have a better idea consume it and make it fattening like i just love so much of what you said speaks to me on so many levels that like we are taking matters into our hands through our stomachs like that's the i love that i love that so true it's so jewish to eat nice foods um i have a couple other really kind of unusual um less known ways that we kind of destroy haman and our food um svardi jews might know this i this is my very first effort ever making this oh my gosh i'm sparty and i've never seen that okay that this is this is meant to look like come on it's good it gets real close i gotta tell you okay this this is a smartie it's it's farty it's a bread it's called okay has a ladino name which is the language that the the sparty jews spoke comes from spanish um it's called oh host the eyes of hamad and i mean i guess the idea is that you eat the eyes first it's so kind of yucky but um i used a really nice collar recipe for this and i tasted the bread and it it tastes really sweet and good so again there's like consumed i've got no chance yeah you want to make it sweet um that's so cool you know that's probably more in the world of svarad of spain that world as opposed to the world of the middle east um but it's a fascinating very similar you know custom that and i've never even heard of before that's so cool well i have i have a couple others um um a lot of the spherity jews went to the balkans to southeastern europe and uh there they um made their own uh purim pastry now again i tried baking it this is my first attempt so it might look a little messy um it's called a fulari a fula alright it's basically um holiday very sweet and inside um is is a hard-boiled egg it's it's a little bit like the ojos de jamaan with the eggs is the egg well inside uh-huh okay i got it a little bit inside isn't inside is an egg there he is that the egg is supposed to burn it's it's like he's it's like he's in jail it's like we locked him up in jail wow so again that's kind of a sweet treat and when we eat it it's it's you know kind of like saying oh we're getting rid of come on wow um there's another reason that these kinds of foods are eaten and it's kind of a deeper meaning again it has to do with food symbolism so not only do we we want to like destroy something with the name come on but um a lot of porn food is is um has a dough pocket like if you look at a hamantaschen there's that sweet filling inside but you can only see a little bit it's really covered with dough there's another um common kind of porn food craplock i i brought a couple samples that we're going to have on our purim souda now these are little pieces of meat covered in dough they're very delicious and they are eaten on uh traditionally three jewish holidays it's traditional to eat craplock i mean anytime you want because they're delicious but they're really customary on yom kippur on hashanah and on purim now these are the three days in the jewish year when we say that we're sort of judged on yom kippur uh god judges us you know what kind of a year are we going to have are we going to be inscribed for a good year or you know god forbid for a bad year hoshanah rabbah is the last day of sukkot and uh it's sort of the end of that whole rosh hashanah yom kippur season and we say that hoshanah ba is really our last chance to sort of repent and do chuva and you know be sealed in the book of life for a for a good year then the third jewish holiday that we crept on traditionally is purim um again on porn we were we were judged you know the jewish people were going to be destroyed in ancient persia and uh and god intervened and we say vane fohu and all of a sudden just in the blink of an eye uh everything got turned around now at the time uh during the time of purim um the jews didn't realize what was what was happening um this was the first holiday that took place outside of the land of israel and uh there were a series of miracles in the story of purim but it wasn't like what we were used to it wasn't like say the miracle of the holiday of shivoh where we all stood at mount sinai and we all heard i am god you know and it was like a really obvious miracle the story of purim um had miracles but they looked like a series of of coincidences at the time yeah it was a coincidence that aster was chosen to be queen of persia and it was a coincidence that mordecai happened to overhear people plotting to kill the king and and then he became an advisor in in the palace and the whole story of porn really took place over lots and lots of years and it was only afterwards that the jews could look back and say aha god was present but he was hidden and we call that hysterical his literally his face was hidden god was there he was helping us but we didn't really see it so overtly at the time so that's another reason that a lot of purim foods um contain something that's hidden like the poppy seed and a hamantaschen or uh these days of judgment there's a sort of symbolic idea that when we eat meat we're being a little cruel a little cruel to the animal we're allowed to eat meat but there's a certain sort of hardness in eating meat so on a holiday where we're judged we want to conceal the meat in uh in a dough you know which really is it's vegetarian dough comes from you know wheat and it's it's much more nurturing that reflects the the nurturing or kind side of life and that's what we want god to be reminded of when we're being judged i thank you there's another tradition on purim to eat beans lentils um i have an example of a bean dish here sverity bean dish that we're going to have on our purim tsuda um and that's because when she was queen of um of persia there's a jewish custom or when she was queen of persia queen esther uh concealed again there's that word concealed she hid the fact that she was jewish um mordechai told her yes go become queen of persia but do not tell anyone what people you belong to and she hid her jewish identity for years but she never really gave up on who she was queen esther had seven different servants one for every day of the week and that way she always knew she could keep track of which day was shabbat she never lost track even though she had no calendar there in the palace and she was a vegetarian when she was in the palace so she did not have to eat any meat that was not kosher and she really just subsisted on on beans and lentils so in queen esther's honor it's very traditional to eat beans and lentils to recall to recall her devotion incredible um then there's one last uh food item i have here um it's traditional uh to have a purim souda a pouring meal it's very festive and uh to have challah um now i i don't know how this worked out this was an experiment of mine um sometimes people try to make special challahs for for porn because it's a fun holiday and you try to you know dress up and and do unusual things it was worked out a little messy um i put poppy seeds mun in and it's also really sweet and delicious and uh and i braided it and then i i made it into a circle so i think i think it's a bit messy some people say that um another really nice reason to have a holla on purim is um if you braid it hopefully a little neater than i braided it um it looks a little bit like a rope and that reminds us also of the rope that haman wanted to hang mordechai on and and of course it recalls how that plan was thwarted and uh you know luckily mordechai survived and triumphed amazing well dr miller thank you so much for bringing such um wisdom and thought the things that we take for granted and i know no matter who is watching this their udes will be enhanced because of your words i think i'm going to go out and make some new foods with my wife and add some new stuff to our our our table um and and i appreciate your insights and i wish you a happy probe and thank you so much for being on the show happy purim thank you bye-bye poor himself and that was dr miller you know it's amazing the traditions that we have and what even gets me more excited about that conversation first of all the stuff that i didn't know about did you know that like beans and lentils like i never ate that and the stuff that like was the sardy stuff like i had no idea about the egg in the bread like are you kidding me but the idea that we have so much meaning but there's the deeper piece to this which i found everything was amazing but what i really loved was what she said about the hidden pieces the hiding the the meat surrounded by the dough the hiding the creating the pockets because that's the story of parm what makes purim an amazing holiday is that it's our holiday you see it's hard for us to appreciate this because we're we're we're we're commemorating it like a holiday right we show up we read the megillah we tell the story we know it's a god-driven event because we made it into a holiday but i want you for a minute to be the jews in shushan they didn't know it was gonna i was gonna work out and they're used to something meaning think about it historically the jews have been exiled from the temple the first temple right the first temple was a temple of miracles fire came from heaven to to to be on the altar they saw miracles all the time they had prophecy they had prophets walking around their prophets foretelling what was going on they all had a prophecy that in 70 years they would be redeemed that was on their lips they lived in israel they never lived outside israel they never had diaspora they don't have like we were once in france and in germany then we were in russia we went to the holocaust and now in america they know any of that stuff they lived in israel with god and the temple and prophets now they're in shushan now they're in the persian empire they went through babylon but now they're in the persian empire and the king seems to have given over the power the legislative power to haman the the the the anti-semite helmet was like the first legit anti-semite like we've had a lot since but he was like the first real anti-semite like a good real i hate the jews i'll destroy myself hitler-esque anti-semite that was the first time we had that we don't have a history of that we don't have people that have survived that when haman passed the law and the jews protested and they saw that were eating dinner together and the band was playing they were heartbroken they were heartbroken it was over because the playbook that they were used to was miracles they were used to god showing up and splitting seeds and bringing manna from heaven they were used to the temple and miracles they were used to the prophets sitting and going do this and god now they were all alone god was nowhere because if he was somewhere he would have came in by now because he knows how to do this thing if he was somewhere haman's hand would have frozen by now when he went to sign the law and the ground would have opened up and shushan would be filled with locusts and none of that happened what happened was it happened to be that esther was in and happened to be that when haman passed a law in the beginning he created a mockery and some people didn't think it's and happened to be that she asked for a meeting and happened to say yes and that night happened to not be able to sleep and then he read the book and the book was a discrepancy and he got it and it all it happened they didn't know it while they were going well it was going on you know when they started to realize things were putting together after it was over you know you you stare at a painting and you're like this is this ugliest painting ever it's just green blotches and the person's like tap stroller goes yeah why don't you back up a drop your nose is at the painting and you're like whoa whoa you're living in portland going where's god and they're like yeah once you back up a drop see how that all put see how that all played out i'm like that's god's playbook now i'd love for him to split a c every once in a while to be honest i really would i thought he would do something in the virus i thought like when corona hit there'd be like some i thought last passover we would see like some massive miracle i'd love to see that until we are we know otherwise that's not god's playbook today hopefully it'll change but he's in he's in the shadows he's pulling the strings through the world of coincidence it just happened to be it just happened to be the israelis just happened to get a tip that the egyptian air force guards switch places at 8 00 a.m so they can wipe out the whole air force before the six day war just happened to be and purim is the day where we go there is no just happened to be and when we start to see the world from that perspective we start learning god's playbook the playbook that me and you live in is the playbook called purim and perm is not just a story it is a shifting of our lenses because when you learn the game of purim and you put on your glasses you see it in your life when you look back and go didn't just happen to be you find purim everywhere check out this untold story of purim that took place with another massive anti-semite that fell out just at the right time check this out so [Music] so [Music] wasn't that incredible just so happened to be stalin dies right before purim wanna hear something credible if you have a chance we can't do it here google purim fest go to h.com and look up purim fest if you have if you don't know what i'm talking about get ready to be blown away h.com google search purim fest the munich trials just so happen to be this is the gras this is the greatness of this holiday it's fun and it's awesome and we gotta dance and have a great time but we can't leave purim and not get the glasses purim is my life in your life it's finding god in every nook and cranny of our lives of our secular regular lives mordechai and esther were secular names it took place out of israel god never appeared it was a regular story of one government official against another but what we did was looked at it and said that's not regular there is no regular we accept you and see you god and when a jew does that sees god in the mundane that is holiness like you can never imagine because it is easy to see god with manna falling from heaven you don't see god in your own kipper lots of jews show up on your own kipper because it's easy to see god in yom kippur you know where it's honey did you see god on a pearl even some of the most devout jews are out to lunch on purim because it's a hard day to find god but people have been finding god forever on purim did i had a chance to catch up with rabbi adam ross he is a british-born jewish educator and writer from 2015-2018 he wasn't a can he was an age campus rabbi in leeds uk now living in jerusalem he teaches in yeshiva high school and is a regular contributor to h.com rabbi ross and i had a chance to catch up on a whole bunch of poor miracles that took place way after perm check this out so adam thank you so much for joining us welcome to the show and happy purim thank you very much happy forum charlie thanks for having me on it's so great to have you on i know that you've done a lot of work on the story of purim now i always thought that the story of perm is at the time of purim and from what i understand when you look at history you've found that actually this story has repeated itself a few times so share this a little bit about what you mean by the perm story being in other parts of history oh let's just let's go straight in charlie let's go back to the year 1420 okay we're in sara gossa in spain not a great time to be a jew although in the last two thousand years not sure there are so many great times although we're not doing so bad at the moment um but it's 14 20. and we're in sarah gosser now the jews of this uh particular city have a custom anytime a member of royalty comes to their town as a mark of respect they take all the torah scrolls out of the the holy ark and they go out into the street as a point of respect and also it's like keeps them a bit uh in the good books of the local kings now through time the rabbis of sarah gosser say you know what these torah scrolls are a very heavy and b maybe it's not such a respectful thing for the scrolls let's leave the scrolls in the ark and just take the beautiful ornate boxes out they won't know and it's gonna be a bit easier let's do that now at the time there's a uh a jew who's converted his name is marcus and he is in the business of trying to get himself in the uh you know in the pocket of the uh the local christian kings and he goes and tells king um king alfonso of aragon he tells him you know what these jews they have taken the scrolls out as a sign of disrespect for you you go and see tomorrow and you'll see what they're trying to say to you is they're dancing but it doesn't mean anything and the king is infuriated now what happens is that that night one of the as we call them the gobain one of the people who is uh running the show has this dream there's a dream this guy in a white beard comes to him and says to him put the scrolls back in and the dream comes again and again and again he wakes up and he goes to one of the shows and right there is another one of the gabayan who's had the same dream oh my gosh they put one and two together people start talking and word gets back but sure enough uh something has been said to the king the whole thing starts uh going all crazy they put the scrolls back in to the boxes the following day it's like the forum story right charlie the following day the king comes back to town ready to uh roast the jews marcus is like come on open the boxes up they open the boxes up and the scrolls are there and the king is is now his anger rather being vented at the jews it's vented at marcus who is punished and the jews write up their story with a scroll that looks and if you saw this scroll charlie you say it's this it's the book of esther it's the scroll of esther but you start reading and it's about the king of aragon and the whole business and you know what they called it purim and you look in the history which is called the purim of sarah gossa and you see how bad those times were about 70 years later the jews are kicked out of spain and they take this custom with them charlie they go to turkey constantinople they go to jerusalem they go to salonika in greece and they carry on this tradition this event takes place um on the 17th of shevat in the month noah nehadar but on that day every time that day falls in the year they read the scroll they have feasts and they do everything that we do at purim so foreign is across the ages not just uh in srishan i absolutely love this story on so many levels that i want to bring out with you um and we always say that you know the the two days that stan oppose each other if you will are the yom kippur and purim they are in many ways compliments of each other and opposites they are one is the most holiest if you will in terms of the um the separation from the physical world one is considered to be the most secular when it's really not right the arizona speaks about that perm is holy right there's always this tension point and they even sound the like kippurim purim and one of the things that i've heard about this which is so in line with what you just said is that it's the difference between purim and kippurim is that kippuram is the days represents the times where god reveals himself it is a moment of supernatural events and and it's a time where you are supernatural you don't eat you don't drink you're angelic and purim is the time in which god represents represents himself in the normal way and the reason why the sages tell us that purim will survive is because we are now living in an era where god doesn't just show up and split seas whenever we need him not because he's not there because that's not how he rolls anymore it's not a sign that he left if you don't have purim glasses you miss god in this world and this story now i'm sure there are others but i want to bring out that the story is for me when i heard it a representation of the divine providence in the world today which is a which is one that exists in in the shadows in in the dreams in the coincidences and that it just happens to be it's so powerful when you when i hear you tell this about what happened that i never heard of before and the fact that they've made the connection i'm sure that's happened so many other times well you know charlie what you say it's um it's so true because the original poem story you put in the context of this was the last point where prophecy existed even in the purim story you have uh the characters of like daniel and you have the characters of um jeremiah's word just in the in the background just before the story takes place prophecy is ebbing away and people are wondering like where is god anymore like what's going on everyone's asking that same question when across time you have these flashes where things seem like hey he's got our back he's still got our back he gave so much strength let me tell you one more story i'll blow your mind okay let's go let's go to um let's go to the czech republic these days we call the czech republic back then it was called bohemia okay a little town called uh jung buzlau in bohemia there's a there's a man his name is david brandos and he owns a grocery store okay one day the daughter of a local christian book binder comes into his store and she buys the groceries that her parents have told her to buy and she goes home among that those groceries is a little jar of plum jam eats some of the plum jam doesn't feel very well her father has also had some for breakfast or something doesn't feel very well either and dies shortly afterwards wow so what goes on in this town everyone goes crazy the jews are poisoning the christians they throw david uh brandeis in jail they throw his wife in jail and his daughter in jail and they close his store down and all hell is about is about to break loose so what does david do he does that's what every uh every jewish character and every story does he cries his heart out he prays for some kind of miracle and what happens next uh you could write a scroll about it and he did okay the uh the local the jews in the community are begging the authorities to look into this matter more before they start uh you know rolling all kinds of punishments they take the body of this guy to prague and they look into what actually he died of and they say this guy died of tuberculosis nothing to do with the plum jam maybe maybe it didn't taste great who knows but that's not what he died of and he's reinstated out of prison and david brandeis and his family lift tell the tale they write a scroll he calls it the song of a sense of david it's in a scroll and he says to his children every day this year you will read this scroll out at a big party and he called it the purim of plum jam the plum jam now listen there are dozens of these stories there are dozens of these stories like i could go on for so long about these stories but like what you just like you said charlie every time this happened it gave so much strength to everyone to say that car of that original purim we still feel it yeah you know as you're talking i'm thinking to myself we each should take upon ourselves to write our own scroll everybody has something that happened in their lives and when they look back they go you know maybe it's not as dramatic and as obvious as right stories that you said but you're you're you're giving us an insight that i don't want to get lost which is it doesn't have to be haman entire annihilation for it to be purim it could be something more subtle in my life and in your life that is still very much a coincidence that's divinely orchestrated and when you look at the world that way and you make your own divine scrolls if you were your own perm scrolls then you're really making perm real well that's awesome can i just give you one last one for the road uh charlie take this one yeah definitely i you know i was looking at the the source of this as in you know is it just the fact that something great happens when you can call it purim because it sounds like for him one of the greatest rabbis that we uh of the uh of halakhah is rabbi abram danzig otherwise known the source of this and one of the sources comes from him his book here his book and he writes in here and it's he writes in here that for someone that a miracle happens for him he should go ahead and mark it in this way and he can call it upon him and more than that he says that he can actually check this out he can actually obligate the entire town or city to take this um this purim this local purim not only for that city but for their future generations if it affects the whole town and he follows up and i'm finished with this channel he follows up with his own personal story and it's written in the book it's all chaptered there and he says here's what happened the year is uh the year is 1804 in vilna where he lives in lithuania and there's a terrible gunpowder accident that takes place a magazine explodes in the heart of vilna and rabbi danzig says that in his own courtyard 31 people died and he writes in his book over here he writes that in his house the roof caved in both the walls cake two of the walls caved in he says there wasn't one member of his family that there wasn't a drop of blood on but nobody died and at that point he said we're writing a scroll we're all gonna celebrate this and he says if i can do it you could do it too and i think like just like you said charlie we all have things in our life which come along be them huge things like that or tiny things that you just say to yourself he's looking out for me i feel it and when you feel it you hold on to it and like you say you are you remember whether you write a scroll or you just tell your children about it you tell your wife or you tell your friends about it it keeps the spirit of prayer my life amazing adam thank you so much for joining us in the show uh i i hope we get to get you back on to give us a little much more of your insights but we appreciate you making our program much more practical and real and tangible that we can take with us um and carry on forward we thank you for being a part of us and happy purim nothing foreign thank you isn't that incredible the purim story i got to tell you something i've got a perm story and so do you each and every one of us if we look back in our lives i bet you there are many scrolls that we can write and we should we really should we should for our children and for our friends we should for posterity we should can you imagine if we do that together on purim we take that upon ourselves to look back at certain coincidences how i met so-and-so how i ended up in this job how i ended up meeting this person how i ended up in israel how i ended up involved in this organization how you were born can you imagine the gift we give to our family and to our friends when we've taken the time to articulate the probe stories in our lives can you imagine a better way to spend permanent to decide at this year before next perm i'm gonna walk into perm with my own purim scroll it may not be as dramatic but it's mine you know what happens when you do that you clarify your lens you clean the lens of this of coincidence and you see god in your life you live purim you know the rabbis tell us that in the end of days the holiday that won't get abolished because we'll have all these new holidays as purim and the megillah will last because this is the story of who we are this is the greatest day of the year because this is the day where god is putting us through the training on how to live and see in today's day with his current playbook there's stuff going on in the world today but you look at it from purim glasses it looks different check out this video from comedian elon gold and just a little bit of what's going on today and some purim check this out a little comedy for us [Applause] [Music] you know we do have a hammond of our time and it's the ayatollah of iron man he's to come one of our time what i'm going to do send in the mcgill with a little note saying don't you see how this story ends don't you get that you're just going to be the bad guy in one of our future holidays that we're going to be swinging groggers to your name making triangle cookies out of the shape of your weird ears by the way i keep my grogger with me oh yeah some of you put it away i have it right there on the couch next to the remote control anytime i'm like watching cnn and something annoys me like oh russian president vladimir putin former secretary of state john kerry [Applause] yeah even when i'm like watching the bachelor and the bachelor dude picks the wrong woman i'm like [Applause] it is a little you know immature that we all i've ever grown adults and it just it seems childish you know i do it i like it because i do all of our traditions but it's just i'm just glad that like you know my non-jewish friends are never sitting next to me while i'm reading the magilla you know i just i don't want to look me in there and that was elon gold right can you imagine i can't wait i got to tell you i can't wait to see what the hall is going to look like after we're done with iran it's going to be amazing we have great food by the way but it's not going to be like hamantashi i'm guaranteeing you it's going to be much more sparty i think we're done with like the whole you know sweet bread thing if you if you're asking me like what's happening next it's going to be hummus for sure olives maybe a little zata like it's trust trust me when i tell you that in the next bit of holiday foods that we're bringing to the world this is fire them are going to be taking over that's just my that's my call just letting you know i'm just making the call now but it's so much more because it's our story that's what promise purim is our story and when you have a chance i know today is going to go so quick get a couple minutes tonight go through the story again and look for all the ways in which god was sowing redemption before the problem came look to see what happens when haman leads haman was called mumuchan in the beginning of the megillah look what happens when he makes ahashverosh pass a law about women respecting their husbands and how everyone saw it as a mockery and i ask wait because that law was passed and they mocked it when he passed the anti-jewish law that's probably why they didn't go out and kill the jews right away because they weren't sure because the last lost failure vashti dies esther gets placed way before the story a decade before the problem mordechai happens to be sitting there and he overhears two ministers trying to kill he saves them it gets put in the book but guess what the book that i got put in no one ever read it was his personal book and the actual main chronicles was changed because the author of the chronicles was haman's son but only on the night before when akishos couldn't sleep did he open up his private book and for the first time in ten nine years see that there's a discrepancy between haman getting the credit but it really was mordechai interesting how that came right at the right time had he noticed that a year earlier who would have cared he came right at the right time notice how everything was planted everything was set up the night before he built a gallow for himself he goes and asked for permission to ahashverosh at the morning after just realizes that he may have lied it all unravels around everything that was the evil becomes the path to good read it start to see that each piece fits like a puzzle everything connects because each and every one of us live lives that seem fragmented but they're really not it's a puzzle it's god's puzzle for me and for you because we all have a path we all have a journey and you can't see it when you're going through it just like they couldn't but if you don't look back every once in a while and read the scroll you never see it and that's the story of purp the time where we pause and look back and go wow look at that painting he's got my back there's something bigger in the world my life isn't random someone's up there pulling strings for me when you appreciate that and see that in something in your past in the jewish past in your community's past it strengthens your resolve it strengthens your faith it allows you to deal with challenges when you don't understand why because you know you'll look back at some point and you'll get more of it and allows you to realize that you're really important so much so that it's worth the master of the universe's time to orchestrate the key pieces of your life and in many ways that's what shabbat's all about this is a special problem because it goes into shabbat shabbat is a time where we stop and realize that there's a purpose in this world and i'm important enough in his eyes to give testimony and to be his partner in creation so on behalf of me and mine to you and yours i want to wish you a double blessing a happy purim and a shabbat shalom may this purim be one that you see things you've never seen before may your life be purim may you always live in purim may the holiday start with you but never leave you and may your scroll only be filled with good but may it be a scroll that you look back on and let it strengthen you as a as a gratitude to god and may we go into shabbat taking those ideas and reinforcing them into our hearts so that we're different people sort of destler once said you don't observe holidays that you go through them they change you i hope and pray next week we can do this show in jerusalem but if not i hope to see you back here and until then happy birthday every generation they take one raising the haters then hashem hit the pavement blazing to save us then the world asks where they where patients are faithless the torah get the hole where the facelift and hatred is baseless we take it erase it and exchange it for that master goal we don't forget wherever we may go there is only one place we know falling down [Music] [Applause] [Music] together [Music] oh [Music]