Join folks from Nehar Shalom as we spiritually prepare ourselves for Purim this year. Wednesday, March 20, 7:30-9 pm, 5 Green St.

In the past as we approached the complicated holiday of Purim, some of us may have recalled fond memories, or felt ambivalence or aversion towards its excess. We may have delighted in the opportunities for reversals and gift exchanges it brings, or shuddered at its function as the steam valve on a pressure cooker of more dogmatic or traumatic moments and places in Jewish history. Some of us may have avoided the violence in the Megillah, relegating it to the safer realm of fictional comic narrative violence or a revenge fantasy that is for entertainment purposes only.

But this year some of us - many of us - may feel dread at Purim’s approach. This year is not like other years. The themes and events in the Megillah strike uncomfortably close to home. The festival’s absurdity and excess interwoven with themes of state-sponsored violence and wielding of power against ethnicised Others may feel at best inappropriate and at worst re-traumatizing.

How can we listen to megillah this year, a story in which a threat of extreme violence is made against Jews, a story in which Jews enact extreme violence against non-Jews, claiming self-defense and with clear overtones of revenge?

During our megillah reading, we will invite the community to draw on some of Judaism's grief rituals to help us adjust the way we receive the megillah this year. We also invite folks to gather on Wednesday evening, March 20, to spiritually prepare together, to ask: how can you best listen to megillah this year? What needs to change? What is the particular spiritual work that Purim is calling you to do this year, and how can we do that work together, in community?