Rabbi's message - February 2022 (ADAR)

Mi Shenichnas B’Adar Marbeh B’Simha
Whoever Enters Adar will Increase in Joy

Happy Post Groundhog Day! As we move from the depth of Winter to the beginning of Spring, our Calendar teases us into character formation: Enter the future and increase your capacity for happiness!

In our tradition Happiness is not an emotion or a “feeling” it is a state of being. Happiness is a mitzvah, a point of connection. As R. Nahman dictates: it is a great mitzvah to aspire for joy consistently. So happiness is an optimal goal I will never and always achieve. Happiness is the capacity for joy. When I aspire to bring joy in my life, the proactive smile creates the warmth of laughter.

I write this in our first month of Adar, because this year our Hebrew Calendar has two Adars to realign the lunar and solar clocks to our rhythm.  In a few weeks we will have Purim Katan, a “mini Purim” that marks the day if we only had one. In a sense, we have Groundhog Month! 

Which brings me back to the one who enters Adar. We are invited to relive a month of late winter to repeat our limited loops of ambition and disappointment or increase our capacity to see light in darkness. We have two times to ask how my being increases potential for joy or if we see another month as an extension of more of the same. It is a choice to enter the month  Adar. the Calendar does not happen to you; you create the times of your life. 

So let us use these months to increase our well being, to believe in a warmer future, to invite ourselves to a better future. Adar II at the full moon will be Purim Gadol, not a carnival rehearsal but life fully lived as a cabaret.