Written by Cantor Rebecca Joy Fletcher, Director of Jewish Life
Years ago, when I still lived in New York City, I found myself one day in a part of town I usually hated – the heart of Grand Central Station. Crowded, frantic, people moving with single-minded focus in every possible and opposing direction – that’s always how it felt to me. Determined travelers and commuters, against each other or certainly not helping, focused only on getting where they had to go. My idea of chaos.
Yet, on this particular morning, returning from a weeklong, Jewish meditation retreat, I did not see chaos in Grand Central. Instead, I saw patterns, like a gorgeous celestially choreographed dance number made up of countless moving bodies, together weaving through their passages and motions a tapestry of humanity without even knowing it.
Watching this pattern underneath – this oneness, this united choreography– the way it all fit perfectly together – I was moved to tears. My insight was fleeting, and within a few moments, it had passed.
But the experience altered me, and I think of it often, particularly each year on Purim.
Purim: Hidden under Chaos, Oneness is revealed
The story of the Jewish holiday of Purim takes place in Persia in the 5th Century BCE when the Jewish people narrowly escaped destruction through the heroism and bravery of Queen Esther.
Esther’s name in Hebrew shares root letters with the word “hester” or hiddenness, a fact the Rabbis of antiquity made much of because of another hiddenness in the story. In megillat Esther, or the scroll of Esther, G-d’s name is never mentioned – a uniquely odd absence.
At the same time, it seems to suit the Purim story well because it is a quite earthly tale, full of plots and political intrigue, strategies, and narrow escapes; a far cry from such mythic holy stories like the Jewish people going out of Egypt.
The Rabbis of antiquity explain that G-d’s name is not, as it seems on the surface, absent, but instead is hidden underneath the entire thing. In other words, underneath this complex story of political tension, antisemitism, hatred, fear, and revenge; underneath this cast of characters pushing this way and that to move their agendas ahead – underneath all this human chaos there is oneness.
There is a pattern, a dance, and a whole.
Purim and the Natural World
And just as I believe this to be true in the Purim story and saw it to be true that morning in Grand Central Station, so too do I know there is there a oneness at the heart of all the natural world.
Judaism teaches us that it is never just this bee, that flower, this tree, and then some soil, all next to each other, but separate. Instead, they are in constant dance together.
It is never produce growing here, fruit trees next to it over there. It may look like that, but in fact the entire natural world exists in a divinely moving pattern, constantly evolving, always in motion – and always together.
It is hard for us as human beings to see beneath the divisions all around us, between ourselves and other people, between this tree and that flower, between this idea or way of life and that idea or way of life.
Then Purim comes along and encourages us to look beneath, to look for the oneness, for the patterns, for the unity. To search them out. Because, while that moment of insight I was granted in Grand Central may have been a gift, we can also choose to consciously cultivate the mind and heart states that help us see wholeness. And what, in our broken and hurting world, could we possibly need more of than this capacity to see the unity beneath all the divisions?
So, I wish us one and all a Happy Purim. May we all be blessed to experience many moments of oneness with each other and with the natural world we are here to embrace and protect!