אָמַר רָבָא: מִיחַיַּיב אִינִישׁ לְבַסּוֹמֵי בְּפוּרַיָּא עַד דְּלָא יָדַע בֵּין אָרוּר הָמָן לְבָרוּךְ מָרְדֳּכַי.
Rava said: A person is obligated on Purim to become so intoxicated
that they no longer know the difference between cursed Haman and blessed Mordecai. (Megillah 7b)
Ad delo yada. Until you reach the point of not knowing, not knowing the difference between Haman and Mordecai, between the cursed and the blessed, between the good and the bad. That is our goal on Purim, to reach such a mindset.
The Sefat Emet connects this ad delo yada concept to the etz hada’at tov vera, the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, where we originally gained the capacity to make such distinctions (Exodus, Purim, 5640). On Purim we are trying to momentarily reverse history, to go back to that innocent time before we ate from the tree of moral knowledge, to get a taste of that experience of peace in the garden, before all the judgment began.
This ad delo yada state of not knowing the difference between the good and the bad reminds me of the field that the Sufi poet Rumi writes about: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,” he says, “there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” We spend a lot of time entangled in conflict, arguing with each other and inside ourselves about who is right and who is wrong. Purim offers us a time to move beyond that judgment and evaluation into a field where we simply meet as we are.
Our Pervasive Tendency To Judge
We can start by becoming aware of how pervasive our tendency is to make such distinctions between desirable and undesirable, good and bad, right and wrong. We are constantly in the position of judging, evaluating and comparing, putting everything into these categories, from people to actions to books and classes and food, good and bad, always evaluating. And when we are in conflict with others, it is often because we are in this mindset, as well. Someone is right and someone is wrong. That’s how we think about it.
And of course, we also do this internally, constantly judging and evaluating ourselves. We have this critical voice that looks at certain parts and feelings and says we shouldn’t be that way. We don’t like our anxiety and our despair and our extreme sensitivity and neediness and awkwardness and rage; these are all put into the undesirable category. In a way we are even in that evaluative space right now, judging the very act of judging as “bad” in some way. It is hard to escape. We separate out these negative feelings as ones we don’t want, and look towards others, like happiness and calm as ones we do want. Anxiety, bad, calm, good. Judgment bad, acceptance good. There is a pushing away of the one, and a clinging to the other, always sorting and separating. This mindframe causes conflict and struggle inside us, a constant war with ourselves, the war of blessing vs curse, of rightdoing vs wrongdoing, played out not just between people but also inside ourselves.
Moving Into The Field Beyond Judgment
How do we move out of this place of judgment into the mindset of ad delo yada, of not making such distinctions and evaluations? Of course, sometimes judgments are necessary and we don’t want to get rid of them altogether. But I think Purim offers us an opportunity to glimpse another way of being, an alternate plane of existence that we also desperately need in our lives. How do we get there?
Rumi speaks of a field, the field that is out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing. Maybe you can picture such a wide open field and imagine yourself running freely through it without concern, running or walking or dancing or skipping, whatever feels good in your body, no right way to be in this field. What would you do if there wasn’t the pressure of doing things right? How would you express yourself? It is like returning to a pre-tree-of-knowledge state, going back to the freedom of your early childhood before all the weight of needing to control yourself and be good, inhabiting your body without self consciousness and expressing yourself without worry of how you will be judged, either internally or externally. Shouting, singing, crying, laughing, whatever. Just being you, exactly as you are.
This wide open field is part of a garden, the Garden of Eden. Things grow here organically, without anyone telling them how they should be. Some we may call weeds and some we may call flowers, but in this garden, they are all just themselves, beautiful as they are, no distinctions. The grass doesn’t worry about growing in the right way or being the right shade of green or bending in the wind properly. It just does its thing. That’s how we are in this garden, too. We are a part of things; we belong here without trying, without making ourselves any different than we are. Can you relax into this field, into this garden? Maybe you want to lie down in it and rest. There is no pressure to get something done, no judgment about your unproductivity. Let that go for a minute, all those voices of what is blessed and what is cursed. You are in the garden of unknowing now, unlearning for a moment everything you leaned about how you should be, and just being as you are. Rest and relax here, or if you are not feeling relaxed, if you are feeling restless or anxious, that’s fine, too. Even if you are full of judgment, judgment of yourself or of me or of this essay, that’s fine. However you are is ok in this field of ad delo yada. We don’t curse or bless anyone here. We don’t make distinctions. We just are.
And the ground holds us as we are. The grass grows and the trees give fruit. God offers us this bounty not because we are good, but simply because we exist and it is the nature of God to love and to give generously. We do not earn this field through our careful control of who we are and how we act. It is just the nature of the universe to hold us and feed us, as we are.
A Field of Meeting
Rumi says of this field – I will meet you there. This is indeed a field of meeting. When we are in a space of judgment and distinction, we struggle and are in conflict; we do not meet, but separate and judge. Good, here, bad, there. This separation is represented by the word beyn, “between,” in the phrase ad delo yada beyn arur haman lebarukh mordecai, until we no longer make a distinction beyn, between them, between blessed and cursed. Hamavdil beyn kodesh lehol, we say at havdalah, the One who separates beyn, between holy and profane. Beyn is a word of separation. The first time it is used in the Torah, God separates beyn ha’or uveyn hahoshekh, between the light and the dark. Separation is necessary in this world of doing and creating, inherent to our existence, and yet the very divine act of separating implies to us that there is also something before and beyond this world that is not separate, a place of oneness and belonging, a meeting place that partakes in some small way of God’s own original unity. We need the separation, but it is a profane act, one done at the conclusion of shabbat, not on shabbat itself when we rest in the otherworldly plane of a primordial divine non separateness.
While the word beyn separates and sets barriers between us, the word ad in ad delo yada is a word that bridges that distance. Ad means “until” and until implies that I am headed over in your direction, I am coming towards you, until you, right up to meet you.
Maybe you can imagine these two words visually, first the sense of beyn, “between,” picturing a between space, a chasm or a big body of water, like a moat, that separates us the way that our judgment of right and wrong separates us from each other and tears us apart internally. Picturing first that chasm of beyn, and then offering it the bridge or the ladder of ad, of until. With ad we cross that separation, we climb over the judgment of who is right and who is wrong and we head towards each other, ad, until, until we are lying together in that field of meeting.
Purim Is The Meeting Place
Purim is the meeting place. On Purim we don’t separate; we join. We send mishloach manot from one to another. These gifts are our ad bridge, a reaching out to the other and a letting go of difference, distinction and old grudges. Like Yom Kippurim (sometimes understood as “a day like Purim”), Purim can be a time of forgiveness, setting aside questions of judgment and moving towards one another in the spirit of ad.
On Purim, we make a feast and invite both Haman and Mordecai. We invite in all our parts, the awkward one and the anxious one and the overly sensitive one, all the ones we normally hold in judgment; on this day, we let go of judgment and celebrate together in the field of acceptance and generosity and grace, like the original Garden of Eden. Instead of judging our anxiety, we say to it, as in the Rumi poem – “I will meet you there.” Can you open your heart and welcome all those rejected and shamed parts inside you to your Purim feast? Can you imagine meeting them instead of judging them? Can you see them all seated together at the table? Some are merry and laughing, and maybe some are crying or fretting, and that’s ok. They can be just as they are with no judgment. Even the ones who judge, let them come, too. We welcome even the judge into this circle of non judgment. We make no distinctions today. There is no beyn here, no separating into categories of light and dark.
Can you make room, too, for the poorest of your parts, the neediest and most vulnerable ones that you normally keep hidden? To them we offer a special gift, a special invitation, matanot la’evyonim. We have shamed them so, embarrassed to admit the full extent of our neediness. We welcome them, too, to this open field, to this garden, to this feast of Purim where rich and poor sit side by side, along with Mordecai and Haman, no distinctions. Come as you are.
A Taste of The Future
This feast of welcoming and meeting is something we get a taste of on Purim, like the taste of the world to come on shabbat. Indeed, Purim is said to be the only holiday that will remain in the messianic era so there is indeed something of the next world in it. Ad delo yada, we say, and this ad, “until,” implies not just meeting, but future meeting, reaching forward to that envisioned meeting place, wanting it, yearning for it, reaching to get there ad, “until” we are there, seeing the destination and moving towards it. This open field is a ya’ad, a destination point, what we are aiming for, a return to the Garden of Eden. We are mostly in the beyn existence of separation right now, but we reach for that other field as well; we hold it in mind as a possibility; we see it in our intoxicated visions and try it on, this possibility of oneness and belonging as we are, this glimpse of lying together in a field beyond all rightdoing and wrongdoing.
Photo by Anna Shvets at Pexels
