This Purim, spread the love.
Be like Mordecai, who made a daily practice of checking on Esther’s welfare in the palace. Be like Mordecai – check up on someone you care about. Ask them how they are and really wait and want to hear the answer, maybe once a week, maybe every day.
And be like Mordecai internally, too – check up on the parts of yourself that you know need daily attention and care, the young parts that are yearning for love, the hurt parts that need compassion, the fearful parts that need company, the lonely parts that need connection. Make a daily practice of care. Spread the love outside and inside.
The Sefat Emet points out that this act of kindness practiced by Mordecai is what ultimately led to the salvation, as it was through these daily visits to the royal court that Mordecai came to know of the plot to kill the king and thereby rose in stature.
Kindness is an effective tool to combat hate and evil and fear.
This Purim, spread the love.
Send your mishloach manot packages with a full heart of friendship and warmth. The mitzvah is to send mishloach manot to your re’a, your “friend,” the same word that is used in the instruction to “love your neighbor as yourself,” ve’ahavta le’re’akha kamokha. What we are sending in these packages is not just food, but also love.
We commemorate our defeat of evil by increasing love in the world.
Let the love be directed not just outward, but also inward. Lere’akha kamokha. To yourself as well as your friend. Send some warmth inside, to all the different parts of you, and maybe, in that climate of friendship, you can encourage your parts to send gifts to one another, too – even if there are parts of you that sometimes don’t get along or hurt each other or disapprove of one another – on Purim, they can send gifts of allowing and welcoming and belonging. Let them have a party of friendship inside you, like our festive seudah gathering.
When you spread love inside, the waves are powerful and generous; they come flowing outward with no end.
This Purim, spread the love.
Send matanot la’evyonim, gifts to the poor. Take note of the poor, of all the suffering in this world at this moment, and send your gifts with compassion and care, with a joining heart that aches for their troubles.
We commemorate our triumph over cruelty by increasing compassion in the world.
Turn the compassion inward as well. Notice the poor on the outside, and also notice the needy inside you, the parts of you that carry suffering and pain and want. There is no limit to compassion; send it to them, too. See their hurt — let them really show you what it’s like – and feel how it stirs your heart, awakens compassion for them and for all suffering creatures in this world.
We fight cruelty and evil by increasing love and compassion and kindness.
This Purim, spread the love.
Photo by Kampus Production from Pexels
Love this message, Rachel. It’s deep, any day we spread love (in any of its manifestations) we make the world a better place. Let’s take the cue from Mordechai and keep it up beyond Purim.