This week we entered the month of Adar, the month in which we celebrate Purim. Our tradition teaches that when the month of Adar begins, we should increase our joy - mishenichnas Adar, marbim b’simcha. The rabbis imagine the joy of Purim spilling out into the entire month and our ability to feel it from the moment we turn the calendar page.
Some years this serves as an invitation to embrace a joy I feel I’m already reaching for. Some years this dictum borders on offensive.
This year felt more like the latter. On Wednesday afternoon, erev Rosh Chodesh, as I sat at my desk humming the melody that goes along with that phrase, I saw the news alerts. Another school shooting. Another mentally ill individual with a weapon. More teachers that heroically put their own lives in the line of fire. More lives taken for no reason.
How can I possibly increase my joy when innocent children and teachers are murdered? This year, my response to the tradition is that the joy will have to wait. For now, I am sad, I am angry, I am full of prayers and a desire for action.
This week’s parashah offers instructions to the Israelites in building the Mishkan, their portable Tabernacle. The Torah describes that in order to build this project that would make their community more holy, every person whose heart moved them had to give. It was those whose hearts moved them that made a difference. I can’t imagine this type of heart-giving is easy. It requires sacrifice and it requires personal action. This was how they were able to build - enough people’s hearts were moved. As Sky Roberts will speak about in his Bar Mitzvah d’var Torah tomorrow morning, this was what enabled God’s presence to dwell among the people.
It was probably hard to feel God’s presence in Broward County, Florida, on Wednesday afternoon. And it will continue to be hard when we hear of another school shooting, which, horrifically, seems inevitable. Today, our hearts must be moved. Our hearts must me be moved to make change. We must give from our hearts so that we are not standing idly by as innocent lives are taken.
May we each feel our hearts beating in profound ways this Shabbat, attempting to leap out of our chests in giving.
