Weekly D'var Torah

 משנכנס אדר מרבים בשמחה
When Adar enters, we increase in joy.
Mi SheNichnas Adar, Marbim B’Simcha-

This Friday and Shabbat, we welcome the month of Adar, the joyful month of Purim.  The Rabbis in the Talmud (Masechet Ta’anit 29a) instruct us to increase in joy.  All very nice, but how is that actually accomplished?  It feels like in the past few years we have collectively absorbed a series of traumas that are usually spread over decades if not centuries.  From Covid to climate change, from Pittsburgh to October 7th, from the hostage crisis in Israel to antisemitism that stretches from campuses to cities, we’ve seen and experienced more than our share of challenges.
 
But never mind all that- let’s be joyful?  How?  Why?  Doesn’t joy require a reason?  Joyful that Spring is coming after a month of frigid weather?  Joyful because we get to eat hamentashen and read about Queen Esther, Mordechai and Haman?  Joyful that the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs (apologies to Travis and Mahomes fans!)?  We Jews have never been fans of a “live for the day” philosophy- our collective sense of self won’t allow us to shut ourselves off from each other or from others beyond our community.  As French-Jewish writer Edmond Fleg said, “I am a Jew because wherever those suffering weep, I weep.”
 
What does it mean to be commanded to increase in joy?
 Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach z’’l (1910-1995), Rosh Yeshiva (head of the rabbinical seminary) of Kol Torah in Jerusalem, tells us to start from the other direction.  You can’t command joy.  But you can strive to remove worry.   When we are freed from worry, the natural joyousness that lies in the heart becomes free to express itself.
 
What a relief!  All we have to do is to be free of worry! 
 As an inveterate worrier, speaking to others who I am certain are in the same club, I join you in a sympathetic eye roll.  Be free of worry?  That’s even harder than being joyful! Except, perhaps it’s not.  After sixty years of being a worrier, I can share that there is one remedy for worry and that is action.  While action may not eliminate the cause of our worry, it replaces the “dopamine rush” of wallowing in negativity with the more subtle but ultimately more powerful effect of making a difference. 
 
Maybe that’s why the first Shabbat of Adar always falls adjacent to the reading of Parshat Shekalim when we were reminded in ancient times to prepare our yearly half-shekel donation to the upkeep of the Temple in Jerusalem.  We continue to be reminded today to give what we can in our time, resources or even in just good will, to building Jewish life.
 When you make a difference, when you give of yourself and join in the slow but steady arc of world-wide compassion in action that the Jewish people are part of, then you replace worry with something else: with joy.
 
Purim paves the way to Passover which in turn paves the way to Shavuot, not only opportunities to nosh on some of our most awesome Jewish dishes, but to experience anew the vision of a redeemed and repaired world.  Even the smallest act of putting a rattling coin in a tzedaka box or the more modern version of clicking “give” on a website of caring, can roll aside the boulder of worry and allow joy to leap up into the world.
 
So be happy, it’s Adar and even more so, increase engagement and giving in even the smallest ways.  Happy Adar.