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On My Mind

Mrs. Aliza Feder's Newsletter

There used to be a small book called ‘Life’s Little Instruction Book’, full of super short entries (one or two sentences each) of different facts that the author had learned over his many years of adulting. Examples of his directives were: “Take any opportunity to take a kid to the zoo”, or “Use credit cards only for convenience, not out of necessity”. 

I really liked this little book. Like a weird amount. I’m not sure what it was that kept me flipping and reading- and then rereading- all of his quotes. It wasn’t his deep wisdom, and for every smart or funny bit, there were a dozen inane ones (“read the Bill of Rights”, uh thanks, I’ll pass). I think that the appeal was the attempt to distill decades of living into a list of tiny bite sized pieces of lesson. 

As I settle firmly into middle age territory (and loving every minute of it), I find these pithy statements just sort of write themselves. Particularly two keep coming up again and again for me- and turns out they both have everything to do with Purim. 

The first one is this: The only thing worth doing is davening. It’s the only thing that has any power. It’s the only pastime really ‘worth it’ in terms of hishtadlus (though Rav Leuchter is pretty clear that Tefillah is never considered hishtadlus, because unlike other hishtadlus, it always works). As the years go by, the stakes seem to get higher every year and it seems the only reasonable thing to do would be to lock ourselves into a room with a Tehillim. It’s tempting.

The second maxim is this: I don’t know anything and I never did.

I used to have Opinions. I used to feel strongly about things- even things that have nothing to do with me. (Maybe even especially things that had nothing to do with me because, when we are young, we are positive we know everything. And the less experienced we are about the matter, the more we feel we know exactly what needs to/should be done.) I remember lengthy conversations with people about all of these morally weighty topics and I was pretty sure I knew exactly what Hashem wanted regarding all of the issues. 

My younger self was pretty cringy. And I don’t mean my 15 year old younger self (she was beyond all help), I mean my 30 year old younger self. Kollel, stay at home parenting, vacations, chinuch methods, simcha spending….just wind me up, hand me a mike and I would be good to go for as long as you would allow me.

And now: Nothing. Nada. What do I know? Everything is so relative. Everything depends on thousands of factors that I actually know nothing about. I don’t know why things happen, I don’t know why things that should have turned out one way turn out another. I don’t know why this one got into that program or that one got married or the other ended up making a massive amount of money. Not a clue. 

I still have opinions, to be clear (ask me about girl’s chinuch:)). But they are no longer capitalized. As a matter of fact, if there was a way to make the first letter of a word even lower than lower-case, I would do it. (Can I make a pitch for an under-case letter?) Turns out even when I have an opinion, talk to me for 5 minutes and I’m pretty sure I can be convinced to feel exactly the opposite after listening to you. Because after all that passion, I’m finding that I actually know really little.

Enter Purim. There’s a beautiful Sichos Mussar where Rav Chaim Shmulevitz speaks about the fact that the intense power and holiness of the day comes from the state that the Shulchan Aruch says we must reach:

 :  חייב אינש לבסומי בפוריא עד דלא ידע בין ארור המן לברוך מרדכי

Part of the avodah of Purim is coming to the same realization that the Jews of Shushan had as the story was unfolding- that they actually did not have a clue what was good and what was bad. There were points when they lost track of what direction the wheel was spinning. And that is actually real joy. Removing your rational mind, recognizing that whether or not you see it, whether or not you understand it, Hashem is guiding all of us with His hidden hand to exactly where we need to be, is pure joy. 

This doesn’t mean that we should be naive or uninformed. It’s recognizing that we just don't know very much about anything, and that’s ok. The joy of Purim is letting go completely of our need to know even what’s good and what’s bad. The thrill of just throwing it all to Hashem and letting go of the wheel because we realize we don’t know where we’re driving to anyway. When I am holding on to the wheel of a car, I will make an attempt to steer and guide it to where I want to go. If someone put me in the cockpit of a plane, though, and told me to fly, I would never even try- it’s way beyond me. Purim is about coming to the realization that we thought we were doing a pretty good job driving the car but what do you know!? It was actually a plane the whole time!

I know nothing. 

And that’s such a relief. 

Wishing all of klal yisroel a happy Purim full of joy,

Mrs. Aliza Feder