Purim in America in 2025

Today's minyan is an opportunity to spiritually prepare for Purim — featuring a drash by Rabbi Sharon Brous!

Every weekday at 8:00 am, Mishkan Chicago holds a virtual Morning Minyan. You can join in yourself, or listen to all the prayer, music, and inspiration right here on Contact Chai.

https://mishkan.shulcloud.com/form/reg-morning-minyan-evergreen

Become A Builder!
https://www.mishkanchicago.org/support/be-a-builder/

New Builder Orientation — February 27th
https://www.mishkanchicago.org/event/new-builder-orientation-q1-2025/

You Are So Not Invited To Mishkan's BMitzvah
Mishkan's Grownup Purim Party is on March 13th at the Chop Shop from 6:00 - 10:00 pm and features a hilarious spiel and a full Megillah reading!
https://www.mishkanchicago.org/event/you-are-so-not-invited-to-mishkans-bmitzvah-purim-2025/

Dancing Queens: Mishkan Family Purim

Our Purim for families is on March 9th at Copernicus Center and features activities for children in grades K-5 and more activities for kids ages 5 and under. Check the link for more information.

https://www.mishkanchicago.org/event/dancing-queens-mishkan-family-purim/

Transcript

All right. Bucha toe, friends, all right. As I said a moment ago, this Minion might just be Purim inspired or Purim themed, which doesn't mean we don't, do you know the minion stuff. It just means we might put a twist on it. So if anybody can recognize tunes that might be different, put them in the chat, because not everybody, not everybody, has the same tunes as frames of reference for this holiday. All right, here we go. Ready. Good morning. Breathe in. Breathe in. The day in Chicago, it's chillier than it was yesterday, which is too bad, but it'll get warmer later this week. Feel free to stretch a little bit as we wake up see

moda ani Le fan mela five akaya, Chef B mishmati Bela, nimati mishmati.

Now I feel like I need to turn on my original sound. You probably didn't get my computer or my guitar in that did you? Oh, no, no, you didn't. I bet you didn't. Let's try that again.

Moda, Ani le Fana, high mishma, tibe, la la la la la la la. La, la, la,

all right. Good morning, friends. Hello, Noah in it's Noah in Nebraska, right. Is that where you are these days? Yes. And Irene in Boston, Aiden in Chicago, and Trish in Chicago, and Ezra and Gail here, like all right, bunch of Chicago folks, Ellen and Sherry Prudy, Chicago, Chicago, Chicago. Lee in Michigan, and all over the place, all over the place, any places I've missed now, Felicia in Pittsburgh, Emmet in Oregon. It's like really a four corners of the country experience that we have here every morning. Did I miss anybody in some far flung place or some not far flung place? No, all right, great, let us,

okay,

go over here. So this, this one yonder. All right, so, oh, Winnipeg. Winnipeg, that's where. Oh, Denver, Sintra, of course. And Roberta, yes, Winnipeg, not Oregon, my bad, sorry, any Oz, yeah, I'm visiting from Oz. Well, if anybody's coming to our in person forum tomorrow night, you will, you will see, like the full costume. And if you're watching online, you'll also, you might, will, you see it. I am doing nothing in tomorrow night's forum. Zero. It is all entirely community, community, folks. And it's brilliant and funny. And if you feel like you need to laugh against the backdrop of this bleak moment in history, I highly recommend coming or tuning in, all right, so I'm trying to find music this morning that's a little more upbeat in the spirit of the month of Adar, which we are in Right now, and we're told by the tradition, Mishkan, nichnas, Adar, marbbi, Simcha, from the moment you enter the month of Adar, amp up your joy. You know, try figure it out. You know, work. Work on ways to amp up joy. So last week we last week, we did a little gratitude, sharing what was bringing you joy this morning. On this morning, last week, I repeat the question this week, what brought you to light this morning? Even here it is, 8:06am Chicago time, 706 east or west coast, 606 maybe even depending on how far west you are, 907 on the East Coast. What's brought you joy this morning? So. So you woke up, and then we'll sing about it. Oh my gosh, Gail, 39 years of wedded bliss and on the and on the Friday night before your before that 39 years of wedded bliss anniversary, you came to show with your husband. Oh, your meeting was canceled, so you're here. I love it when things get canceled so that you can do things you actually want to do hallelujah.

All right, you can keep you can keep sharing things that are bringing you delight this morning, while I sing this eve, duet E,

duet, Hashem E, duet, Hashem de Simha. Of Birna Nana, the fun of Birna na bi doet da Shem, DEA, Hola, Fana virana, a fun Abir Na Na y la, lambda.

Simha,

I love this.

I'm not going to read every single every single one, because some of them also seem like, you know what. They're sort of, they're sort of designed for the intimacy of this Minion, but we've got a very cuddly doggo coffee, hot tea. Spending Purim with my two grandkids, waking up next to my dog, got a lot of dog themed delight this morning. Looking forward to seeing flowers in Garfield Park Conservatory today. Mmm, yeah, God laughs in flowers. And tis the season, and in sunny Pittsburgh, my love is walk, waking up to wake walking, walking up to therapy, to Squirrel Hill. This sun rising day, and I'm almost finished editing my first book. We are all connected. We are the Stardust crew. I can't wait to read that book, and for maybe, maybe you'll do a reading for us of some section of it. Felicia, at some point. Oh, Bonnie, stop. We're blushing. Bonnie wrote this Minion. Love, love, love, all right, I want to, I want to move, oh, man, well, ASHRAE. ASHRAE means joy. I you know what? Okay, we don't have the entire, the entire text of Aleph to TAF here, but I want to do a more upbeat tune for ASHRAE. We usually do that really nice, gentle, ah Shrey, which is so nice. But my theme this morning is almost like slap, happy, Joy. So this tune is an nimza Miro, Bucha nashita, rogue. It's like a It's also an A to Z poem that's often done at the end of end of services, with the Ark open in a more in a in a service, service where they do more of the liturgy than we do. By the time we get to this part in the service, we all just want to go to lunch

so we don't do it. But set to ASHRAE. ASHRAE, oh yeah, hallelujah. I am Chicago. Ashraya. I'm sure Adam. Adonai, Aloha, and

then we're gonna jump to the end, down here,

taking la tadon i da verb, COVID, the adolam, hallelujah, bam, there. We did. We did it. We could do the nigger. No, I

all right, and with that, turn my morning into dancing Psalm 30, of course. And that's just a prayer for all of us. May May, Hashem. Turn our morning into dancing, our sadness into joy, and help us turn that frown upside down in whatever way the moment calls for. I was talking to somebody who has been struggling with, struggling with, like, their attitude. You know, just like receiving, receiving a little bit of, receiving a little bit of of data from, you know, friends, family and others that like they haven't been, you know, as positive or as helpful, or if they were helpful, they were kind of grudging about it. They were telling me about this and and they gave me an update yesterday. They said I tried just leaning in to being helpful and positive. So rather than feeling like you asking me to do something is imposing on me, I just decided to, like, throw myself into it, you know, and be here for it and and not smile and say, Sure, of course, I've got it. How else can I help? Because I was pretending, but actually like to embody, to try to be that person. And they said I loved it. It was so much better. It was just so much better to want to be in connection with people and want to feel like I was part of their story, instead of that they were imposing on my story. And yeah, fake it till you make it. Ricky says, you know, and it's interesting, right? Because, of course, there's a lie and there's a line where, like, if that's how you are all the time, and you've been trained since childhood like always make other people happy. You know that's also a way to run yourself down and to not know who you are, but for somebody who actually, like, knows who they are, and the truth is that they know that, like, sometimes they'd rather be left alone, but maybe you know their job or their family or whatever calls them into relationship and into service. And the truth is, if you're, you know, if that's where you are, if that's where you've got to be eight hours a day, you basically got a choice, like, Who do I want to be, and who do I want to be, you know, during this time? And so, you know, they just said to me, I tried being the super helpful, you know, it's like, it's like, when you when you go to the coffee shop and they're friendly to you, and the truth is like, they are friendly to hundreds and hundreds of people every day, and that is a practice, but it makes you feel so good. And the truth is like, it's it, you know, like that, that the joy goes, goes both ways, and the mirror neurons, when somebody else is happy, makes us happy too on the inside. And it's like a self reinforcing, self reinforcing cycle. And so I feel like that's what Adar is. Adar is kind of telling us turn that frown upside down. I know that might not be how you're feeling right now, but you know what? Like try it, fake it till you make it and maybe we'll create some more joy in this world that we take with us, not just, you know, into our eight hour day, but we actually like change the world with which we'll talk about more in a moment. Oh, it's 815 All right, I want to do Shema. And then I brought some poor and poor em Torah that I wanted to both listen to and learn a little bit. So that's what we'll go into after we do healing prayer. And for a healing prayer, I want to do it in the the havta. So we'll go from Shema as you as we do Shema and the connection of all of us, the connection of all living beings, the connection of all life. Then we're going to go into that. Have to and as we do that, feel free to put names in the chat of the folks you're thinking about this morning. Yeah, we've got a young woman in our community who has surgery next week. I'm thinking about her. I'll put her name in the chat and yeah, just take a moment now to feel, feel your feet on the earth or whatever it is you're sitting on, feel your chair or your bed, or whatever it is that you're sitting on, absorbing your body weight, sit up a little bit straighter, or whatever position you're in, just take a breath that allows you to really breathe deeply. Relax your shoulders, relaxing your jaw, relaxing the muscles around your ears and your eyes

Shema, Yisrael.

Adonai, hello, hey, no, Adonai.

They have to eat Adonai.

But they

to

everyone On your lists here, hiyas and Noah's list, anises list, Linda's list, Gail's list, Sherry's list, broody's list, they are his list, irene's list, Ricky's list, Aiden's list, Noah's list, my list, Susan, Susan's list and Julia's list. I'm saying you're I'm saying the Roberta's saying your name, of course. But then there are dozens and dozens and dozens of people we're thinking about here. Does anyone have any updates on a person you were praying for, like, maybe a couple months ago that no longer is on your prayer list because they're actually doing better.

I have the reverse, but,

well, hang on, before you before before you give us the reverse. Actually, I want to know if there's somebody you know, yeah, my mom is doing a lot better. I'm so glad to hear that gal. Yeah, it's great. Thank

you. I have someone on my prayer list. I still keep her on there, though, but my friend Anna, she's a young woman, she was diagnosed with glioblastoma, which is like brain cancer. She had 18 month living, but just as of last week, she has been cancer free. 21 months no tumors growing in her brain or in her body. So yeah,

oh, my God, that's incredible and really miraculous that almost never happens with glioblastoma. That's incredible, beautiful, yes. Oh, and Ellen, you said my parents every now and again, there's something, but they're both doing well, I think it's just, it's so important, you know, because we have, if you've been in this Minion for enough time, you've seen people's lists grow, and we've seen people's lists change, and every now and again, you know, somebody goes goes off our list because they die, you know, and and that's so sad, but it's also a kind of release for many people who have been suffering with some kind of chronic something after many, many years, but it's always worth asking if somebody goes off the list because actually, they're getting better, you know, or they don't. They don't feel like, alright, you know. Say, save your prayers for somebody who really needs them right now, maybe I'll be back there, but I'm not today, and I'm okay. I had

a friend who's a second lung transplant in the country she was supposed to live five years. We prayed for her for 25 years. How incredible. And all the doctors were amazed that she lives so long, and she attributes the prayers, I mean, went to the wall. We had special prayers for her, and she was Unitarian, but still. And the funny thing is, when she went through one of her surgeries, she said she had a born again Christian in her room. When she told her the Born Again Christian got out of bed and went on her knees, and went on her knees, and she's like, don't pray for me. The Jews got me covered. I'm good. And she was another 15 years her name was Janet Reardon. She wrote me peace. So I believe prayer works. Yeah, 85 you get a prayer every day, even if you're fine. And that's my damn it's,

Oh, I like that. That's a good tradition. That's a good tradition. I

got to take somebody off my list, somebody, you know, actually rabbi, Robert granite, oh, who, two months ago, was so close to death, a hair's breadth from death, really. And even though he, he, you know, ended up in the hospital with a no heartbeat and no no pulse, no breathing, they they worked and they wouldn't give up, and he's actually doesn't even have terrible brain damage. Oh

my gosh. Well, Aiden, I want to follow up. I want to ask you more about that, but maybe not right now, but thank you for that update, because that's always good to know when you know somebody's, somebody's actually doing better, all right, beautiful. So let's, let's talk about poor em. Let's, let's shift gears a little bit, and then we'll close with. Kadisha tome, after we do a little bit of learning, and then there might be more learning to do. So I think I introduced this book last year. There were two different books that came out last year by the same name. What did I just do with what I just do with the other one? Here it is. One is for times such as these, and one is for such a time as this. And they're both translations of a line in the Purim story that Mordecai says to Esther. Does anybody want to do a, you know, quick two sentence recap of at what point Mordecai says the line, maybe it's for a time such as this, Glenn, you're like nodding along. So Glenn, why don't you know what?

When Mordecai goes to Esther and says, You have to go to the king to try to save the Jews, and she says, Oh, no, no, no, no, I can't do that. You know, if you go to the king without being asked, you'll be killed, blah, blah, blah. And he says, No, it's for time such as these. You were put in this place to do this. Right?

Exactly. Thank you. Very, very nice. And what I think is fascinating and interesting about the way that that line has been used and quoted is that it in much the same way the Bible is often used and quoted. It is quoted to justify things that people over here believe and people over here believe so in this, this book says a radicals guide to the Jewish year and and and I've read some sections of this to you before, and this one is written by the Rabbi of Park Avenue synagogue, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove in New York. He would not consider himself a radical, nobody, nobody who knows him would consider him a radical. The authors of this book consider themselves anti Zionists, and they talk about it. The author of this book does not, and does and also talks about it, but certainly does not identify that way. Both of these books talk about really, like, why should one be Jewish? Why should one invest oneself in this tradition, you know, with this long history of persecution, but also resistance, you know, and so the Purim story becomes a really interesting goal. Like, what do you want to focus on in this story? Do you want to focus on the kind of endemic and repetitive nature of persecution and antiSemitism, you know, to the Jews? Do you want to focus on the reclaiming of agency and power and resistance of the Jews. That happens? You know, this story contains all of it. Do you want to talk about self defense and the way that the Jews defend themselves? Do you want to talk about how the Jews go to great lengths, maybe too great, to defend themselves in a way that might actually feel no longer like self defense, but actually, like revenge, you know. And so the story lays a really, I think, important foundation for all of those conversations that are unfortunately all too relevant. In any case, my own Rabbi, braus, gave adrash This past, this past Shabbat that I really I wanted to, I wanted more people to hear and I wanted to share with you. She, she spends the first 10 minutes and nine minutes or so of the Drach kind of setting up the story, the Purim story, and really talking about the way that the King, who is this like ego driven opportunist who doesn't appear to have much of a moral compass of his own, is kind of like blown by the winds of, you know, opportunity and prestige. And he appoints this guy who, you know, like, he appoints this guy to a position with a lot of power and influence, you know, into an unelected position of great power and influence. And it turns out that this guy is deeply insecure and dangerous. And, you know, a Jew offends him, and he decides, you know, in a classical racist way, to take out his to take out his upset, you know, his upset feelings about this one guy on the entire people, you know. And so then, then she explores a Midrash that explains, like, why is it that Achashverosh, who at this point had never exhibited any animus toward Jews, goes along with it, and not just, you know, Haman, offers to pay Achashverosh for all of the money in taxes that he would have, that he would be losing with the death of the Jews. You know, all the Jews in the in Shushan would have paid taxes. So if the king gives permission to destroy them all, to let people destroy them all, then they would be losing money, of course. So Haman offers to compensate the king, and the king says, It's fine. Don't worry about it. Okay, now don't worry about paying me anything. Do what you want. Here's the stamp. And so she says, Why is it? Yeah, that the king would just, would just go along. And she says, because the truth is, I mean, what the Midrash is is arguing is that the way anti semitism functions, a little bit like what Ben was talking about last week, or possibly any, any real, you know, sort of racist animus, is that it's just lingering there beneath the surface. And when it is awoken, it basically, you know, it allows one to just lean in and justify, you know, aggression and violence, and that it's not that you needed to be convinced that this was a good idea. You are. You already kind of were harboring those feelings. It's just you didn't have an opportunity to express them. And so that was kind of King Achashverosh and everybody in the kingdom. And so she, she kind of lays all of that out in the first nine minutes. And now I'm going to and I'm going to play from here. And I guess the truth is, if you find yourself disagreeing with anything she's saying, I look forward to the dialog after after minyan. But I just, I thought that it was a very important kind of melding of the Purim story, The Midrash that we inherit, about how antiSemitism functions and how Jews are used as pawns in non Jewish societies in which we live. And that's an old story, and it's also a new story. So here we go. Everybody tell me if you can hear and see this. Okay,

alas, now another year, another series of congressional hearings, ostensibly trying to hold universities to account for an increasingly violent and extreme anti semitism. Don't I applaud these efforts, the fact that there are finally grown ups in the room a joint task force to combat anti semitism, determined to hold to account the institutions that have so utterly failed to protect our Jewish kids. My Jewish kid, for 17 months, some of these universities have fallen into a moral quagmire of their own making, failing to offer clear guidelines and protocols that would honor the right to protest, that would honor free speech, all while keeping all students safe. For 17 months, my kid and her friends have been crying out about their experience on campus, and I, by extension, have been gaslit along with them by many of my own friends and allies who simply cannot accept the reality of what they are reporting to us because it does not fit into the rigid confines of our understanding of how movements for justice work. I've heard many people say that they are heartened this week that finally, finally someone is saying that it's not right for Jewish students to be threatened and marginalized in universities, kicked out of clubs. Finally, someone is objecting to these classes being disrupted, to dorms being fired with Jack boots stomping on Jewish stars with images of machine guns and the words the enemy will be eliminated. Finally, someone willing to offer unequivocal condemnation for students met on their way out of Chavez dinner with go back to Poland. But no, I am not heartened. Our saviors have not arrived. Ted Cruz is not our Queen Esther, and none of these efforts have made the Jews safer, because I know that these efforts, including denying my alma mater the epicenter of some of the dumbest and most shocking displays of overt anti semitism, denying that university $400 million and threatening to deport students to engage in protest these measures do not emerge from a genuine desire to keep our kids safe. These efforts are driven by political operatives who claim that they are simply trying to ensure that institutions that receive federal funding are in compliance with federal anti discrimination requirements, and yet it is the same political operatives, literally the same people, who are leading the fight to defund the Office of Civil Rights and who are putting pressure on the EEOC to no longer prosecute cases of discrimination against employers who are blatantly, blatantly, blatantly harassing and discriminating against trans and non binary people. So no, I don't believe that they are genuinely interested in fighting discrimination, nor are they genuinely interested in fighting anti semitism. Now, how do we know this? Because these same characters, faune over the wealthiest and most powerful man alive defending his support of the neo Nazi Party in Germany and his repeated use of the Nazi salute, no. A Heil Hitler is not just an awkward gesture. These same warriors against anti semitism perpetuate Nazi era imagery of the Jewish billionaire controlling the purse strings of the government. These same warriors against anti semitism will platform. And amplify the voices of their hard right anti semitic influencers. In fact, these same operatives are the mirror image. They rely on precisely the same dangerous images and conspiracy theories of some of the student prep protesters that they are now threatening with deportation these hearings, the defunding the threats of militarized campuses and rewritten curricula. These are extreme acts, and I understand why they may feel instinctively comforting to some in the Jewish community. Finally, someone is listening to us, but please hear me that these actions themselves constitute a form of anti semitism. What may feel today like a welcomed embrace is actually putting us at even graver danger. We, the Jews, are being used now to advance a political agenda that will cause grave harm to the social fabric and to the institutions that are best suited to protect Jews and all minorities. We are being used our pain, our trauma, is being exploited to eviscerate the dream of a multiracial democracy while advancing toward the goal of a white Christian nation. And this tactic Jews as a scapegoat, to divide our society and to weaken democratic norms. This is not new. This is a playbook that has been used by authoritarians of the far right and the far left, those whose interest is in sowing division and justifying repressive policies and distracting the population from the truly nefarious and rapacious agenda that it is advancing before our eyes at Warped speed. I again turn to Hannah Arendt, who warns of exactly this in the Origins of Totalitarianism. Anti semitism, she writes, was the ideological weapon for the destruction of the old order. It served to absolve new movements of all responsibility for the upheaval that they were engendering. So please hear this, totalitarian leaders used anti semitism to shift blame away from their own destructive policies, ultimately framing Jews as the cause of the pain that the people were experiencing as a result of their own repressive actions. Ultimately Arendt concludes that it was the Jews who were held responsible for the destruction of all national structures in a time in which the old world order is being remade before our eyes, we would do very well to heed this call Jews, paradoxically blamed for both the protests and the repressive response to them, for both globalism and nationalism, capitalism and communism are the perfect wedge. We are the perfect wedge for those who are seeking to dissolve and to destroy our democracy. And here's just one small proof text of that for you. Recently, the right wing think tank that was responsible for creating project 2025 released a national strategy for combating anti semitism. This was written not by Jews, but by Christian Zionists. This policy brief is, as my friends, Rabbi amikha, lalave and Julie Dorf describe it a grotesque abuse, instrumentalizing the fight against genuine anti semitism among people of good will in order to bring down all dissent and liberal civil society in the United States. It is an affront to Jews, and it is dangerous for America. And that foundation called this plan, unfathomably project Esther. This is not only a gross act of appropriation of our sacred text. This is a pernicious deception, and we must not be fooled. Listen, megid, Esther seems to have a happy ending after near annihilation, the Jews are saved. They witness the transformation may Yago and Lizzi from terrible devastation to elated joy, from grief to festivity. They make a feast. They send sweet gifts to one another. They take care of the poor. They have survived. But we would not be wrong to feel unsettled as the story closes and we roll back up this sacred scroll Thursday night, the whole thrust of the narrative is that life is capricious and uncertain and that the whole world turns upside down again and again and again. It would be impossible for us not to predict that a chapter 11 will follow after the happy ending of chapter 10, political upheaval. The Megillah seems to be warning us is a condition of diaspora, the relative calm of the past decades for Jews in America has been an exception. The rule is turmoil, and our survival depends on us learning how to navigate that I keep imagining these days that we are traversing a stormy sea in a rickety boat, and with every wave, we are being thrown to the right and thrown to the left, and I feel a call from deep within my soul to drop an anchor and to withstand this storm without losing my heart and without losing my mind. In order to do so, you and I will need to defy the norms. US and the storms, by anchoring together, by anchoring in community, by anchoring in our values, by anchoring in our courage, by drawing up our resiliency, like Queen Esther did, not the appropriated Queen Esther of the upside down world of white Christian nationalism, but in the spirit of the real Esther, the courageous, beautiful, humble and wise, Persian Jewish queen of our ancient sacred story. Can he hear rats on? Let us be like Esther was

a man. Man. Okay, all right, amen, we're gonna say kadishi, Tom, mourners, Kaddish, and then I am here for whatever reactions and conversation you want to have after hearing Rabbi bras is pre Purim, Parashat, sah, sermon, Hang on. Let me find Kaddish here. Ah, Kadisha tome is also, you know, not just, not just for, not just for those who are remembering, but also we say Kaddish on the heels of learning something. So all of us can say it this morning. Nathan Pollock markner, love Theresa Owen,

Linda Cohen, Nancy, Jacobson, Sheldon tobolsky, Joan Carlo, Fran Weinstein, would anybody like to lead us in Kaddish this morning? I

Okay, no one else does. I can lead. Folks can join in.

Thank you. All right. And I'm just seeing a couple, a couple names here, Roberta Flack and Pauline Desmond and Brandon, and also thinking about a community member at Mishkan, Melanie cost, who just lost her father, Barry, may all of their memories be blessings.

I'm just one of the Sidra. Oh, here we go. Oh, okay, sorry, yes, good down. Lizzi may Rabbi, divra, who say via, make Mark, who say Bucha. Israel, but a galah of his man, curry vmru Amen, amen,

Rabbi Amaya

Barak, buista Bach, but yes, but are these? Raman? Shamaya Bucha, hey, shlama, Rabbi mishmaya, Bucha. Elena via call Israel, vmru Amen. Huya ace Shalom. Elena via call Israel via call Yosh Fauci amen,

amen.

My hat. It has three corners. Three corners has my hat. And had it not three corners, it would not be my hat. All right, that's a old Purim, but they doing, you know how COVID Shelly? You guys know what I'm talking about. How COVID Shelly, shallow Spino, shallow ash. Pino la COVID Shelly, do they how you shallowish? Pino lo hayaza, hakova. Shelly. Then when you know, you take out all the pointing at your and everybody laughs. All right. Hug some air. Happy. Purim, stop the recording.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai