A Poem for Purim: Until You Don't Know

Ad delo yada*

“Until you don’t know” 

Keep celebrating 

Until you don’t know anymore

You can’t tell the difference

They seem the same:

Esther and Vashti 

Black and white

Us and them.

The invitation is not to know.

Not to know 

But still to care -- 

To send out gifts in shiny packages

Or in paper bags that children drew on

To send out food to feed the hungry

And also the not hungry

To include them all.

Maybe it’s easier to care

Without taking on the weight of judgment from above

To relax into the great green grass beneath all our feet

To feel the love that breathes through uncolored air

And that weaves its way through the trees

Who stand witness to it all.

To turn to the other

Outside us and inside out us

And to celebrate together

Until we really don’t know

You from me

Yesterday from tomorrow

Sky from earth

But only know now

Us here this moment.

Venahafoch hu

Everything was turned around in the Purim tale.

We were down and then we were up.

They say the point is:

We did win in the end.  

But It was a seesaw ride

Someone at the top, 

And someone also always at the bottom.

I am feeling a bit seasick now

From all the ups and downs

Of thousands of years.

I was thinking it might feel nice 

To sit side by side

On a park bench.

They say that Purim is the only holiday

we will still celebrate 

In the Messianic age.

Maybe because it reminds us

Not to go back to the seesaw,

But to keep moving forward

Ad delo yada

Until -- until is a word

That reaches forward

Yearns

Wants something

Redeems

Until we really don’t know --

Have forgotten --

The illusion of separation

And feel only that we belong

Ish el re’ehu

Each person to her neighbor

Her peer, her friend

Herself.

Until  

Our not knowing

Opens our hearts to know

That the world is One

And God is One. 

*Ad delo yada עד דלא ידדע, literally, "until one does not know," is a phrase from the gemara (Megillah 7b) referring to an obligation to drink on Purim until one can no longer distinguish between "Blessed Mordecai" and "Cursed Haman."