Purim and Yom Kippur: Losing Ourselves in a Mitzvah

Did you ever wonder what Purim was all about? It seems to be a child's holiday, replete with costumes, Graggers, and Hamentashen. The stress is not on prayer and meditation, but on action: lots of L'Chaims and dancing, eating, and gift-giving. Yet we know that Yom Kippur is called so because it is a day (Yom) like Purim (Kippur). Purim accomplishes what Yom Kippur does, only in a very different way. Perhaps the joy of Purim offers us what meditation and prayer cannot: the opportunity to lose ourselves in a Mitzvah. We are caught up in joyous celebration for an entire day, with no thoughts of our needs, spiritual or material. We celebrate the triumph of unity over dissension, of Jewish pride over assimilation. As the Jews did so long ago in Persia, we give a collective sigh that we are still here, we are still Jews, and we are still one.

Purim is all about transformations. A day that should have been full of tragedy was transformed into a joyous celebration. A month that was chosen for destruction was transformed into the happiest month of the Jewish calendar. The costumes worn on Purim remind us about a higher reality that is only apparent when you look a little deeper, past the surface of life.