Two years ago this March was the last time we had a large group of people in our Temple not wearing masks. It’s hard to imagine that we are now marking the two-year anniversary of our world being turned upside down. The last event we held was our Purim Carnival before we shut down all in-person activities was our Purim Carnival. I remember sitting at a corner table with a few lay leaders and staff members wondering if it was a good idea to still have been holding the event. With forced happy faces on, while watching the children play, we debated how long it would be until the virus passed over us. We discussed the idea of maybe by Pesach 2020 there would be a miracle and the virus would just pass over” us and then we could all come back together for our community Passover Seder. How wrong we were.
But here we are two years later about to have our first in-person Purim celebration. Things are looking better, things are opening up, and God willing, the trend is continuing and the infection rates are dropping much in the same way they were when I wrote this piece two weeks ago.
While this pandemic is not yet over we are in a far better place than we have been in the past two years. We are gathering in-person, we are having congregational dinners in-person, we are celebrating important moments of our lives in-person. But we are also doing it online as well. There are so many ways that you can connect to our community.
I want to encourage you all, in whichever way you feel comfortable, to come together for Purim. After these last two years, we need a good laugh and we need it with other people, whether online or in-person. Let us celebrate this holiday of freedom the best way we can, with joy, with laughter, and with one another.
