Hidden Joys, Hidden Power
Dear Friends -
This is the best time of the year for bird folks. Spring is here. That means spring migration of course, but it also means other equally important things. Spring is the time of mating and hatching, so you get to see really astonishing and awe-inspiring behaviors. The weather is crisp and then warms a bit, without being oppressive. Flowers are out in abundance, so there’s also the perfume of the trail and the symphony of insect life. On and on it goes. Spring is just the best!
Spring is also the time of various cultures’ rebirth holidays. If Easter and Pesach aren’t enough for you, there’s also Purim. And it’s Purim that I want to explore today.
Purim is one of the “They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat!” holidays. More specifically, Purim is a commemoration of the bravery and wisdom of Queen Esther as she saved the Jewish people from a planned Persian genocide. Persia is of course the ancient name of today’s Iran. Esther, like most Hebrew names, has a meaning too. The word means “hidden.” And it’s this hidden aspect that I find so fascinating. What’s hidden in the Book of Esther? What’s hidden out on the birding trails? What’s hidden within ourselves?
Judaism is an overwhelmingly God-centric religion. Over and over, the Torah begins sentences with, “And the Lord spoke to Moses saying….” The Prophets and Writings refer to God constantly. Our liturgy thanks God, asks of God, extols God. But the story of Esther is different. The Book of Esther, alone among the narrative books of the Hebrew Bible, does not contain God’s name. [Two notes: God’s name is spelled out using the first letters of four other words, a hidden reference. The Song of Songs, a non-narrative book, also omits God’s name.]
Purim, alone among the Jewish holidays, does not celebrate an explicit miracle (Hanukah, Pesach) nor an implicit miracle such as God’s creation of the world (Rosh Hashanah) or the harvest (Sukkot). Purim is the story of a woman who rose to the occasion and saved her people through her own accomplishments. Purim is a holiday of human agency - a woman’s human agency, no less! - rather than a Divine event.
I wrote recently about an Interrupted Walk when I didn’t see any birds. I was curious at the time about what could have happened. Where did the birds go? How could I not see them in their accustomed place? And this prior episode came back to me very powerfully when I went back to the same park - and sure enough, all the expected birds were there, just as they ought to be. What had been “hidden” was now back, prominent and obvious. Click here to watch today’s Interrupted Walk, and you’ll see that many of the photos depict birds “hidden” in different ways: the light obscures as much as it reveals; individuals are difficult to distinguish from the flock; faces look away; camouflage is evident, etc.
We too, in our lives today, wrestle with this dichotomy between hiding and taking action, between relying on others (human and Divine) versus exercising our own agency powerfully and explicitly. Polls show overwhelming disapproval, for example, of both Trump and Biden as our Presidential candidates, yet each of them absolutely romped to their nominations without any meaningful vote against them. The chasm between poll results and voting booth results is a failure of agency. Purim, amongst its many lessons, is a reminder that even a young woman from a persecuted minority can rise above her circumstances and become a heroine. What can we do?
The Hebrew Bible can be read as a political treatise as much as what we would refer to as a religious text. It is the constitutional document of a theocracy administered by the Priests, following a series of 613 laws, with governmental structure, etc. Even the punishments, think of the Israelites’ “sentence” to wander in the desert for forty years, can be read as a remedy for political immaturity caused by slavery. The generation of slaves had to die out before the generations of God’s subjects could establish a kingdom in the holy land. So where does Purim fit?
Purim is about creating space. God “hides away,” out of the story, making way, allowing people to step up. We’re not being abandoned, on the contrary. We’re being given latitude to grow into our full capabilities. As anyone who has ever parented a teenager will immediately recognize, this is both a challenging and wonderful exercise….
This morning I saw many birds. That’s a fantastic thing for me. And had I not, I would have focused instead, exclusively, on my own thoughts and the lessons of hidden absence. That ain’t so bad either. As we move through Spring and revel at all we see (and hear and smell and touch and taste), don’t forget to spare a thought for what’s hidden - and why.
Be Grounded. Fly High.
The Avian Rebbe