All these feelings – the fears, the desire for things to be quiet, for Jews to be quiet, this whole tangle of ancestral anxiety inside of me  – it all comes into view at Purim time when we read the Book of Esther. This ancient book of ours is a symphony of anxiety. 

This is what I want for all of us — Jews and everyone else living in this time — to survive the terrible and to keep flourishing through it. 

So much is demanded of us now but I, for one, have been feeling inert, immobile. Tu Bishvat reminds us to have patience – the sap will again rise.

I had cause to do a deep dive into Ma’oz Tzur – our old Chanukah song, sung in English as “Rock of Ages.” So much more to it than I’d ever thought. I went from indifference to love. Come geek out with me.