How Do I Enter Purim This Year - Rav Shlomo Katz

[@ellen-yy3oc]

Thank you so much Rabbi. SO helpful. And we see at the end of Chapter 9 the obligation to fast and --- the word 'za akatam' So powerful.

[@jademachat855]

Chag Sameah & Thank you so much! Please send me Esty Rosenberg ‘s talk on Purim.. Toda Raba 🌹

[@BMBYHL]

Thank you

[@shifrahendrie6690]

Something is wrong with this picture. Not with what you're sharing, which is truth, but this whole picture. Something is wrong with the way we're handling it, as if we have no say in how things unfold. Maybe as individuals we don't, at least not overtly. But as a collective, as a people... I'm newer here than some, but it seems to me that, despite the intensity of life here, people are unusually disconnected and disempowered. What's different now is that, as the Rebbe said, we are literally in yemot HaMoshiach. Yet we continue to cede our power and give our trust to the same government, under the same principles, that created this horrific situation. Months of war and disruption with no visible end in sight and no clear strategy that we know of. While being sad and horrified over what happened, we continue to allow the same leaders to make the same kinds of decisions that bring more losses. We praise (justifiably!!) the devotion and bravery of our soldiers and people, but why are we so willing to still blindly follow the same leadership whose policies and interests have put us in a state of perpetual trauma, which is intensified now, but which has never been allowed to heal? I heard the Rebbe say that the Jewish people are dreamers, and that if we weren't, we would never be able to tolerate what we are tolerating. Sometimes I've thought that nations have the governments that reflect the collective level of consciousness of the people. Is that true in Israel as well? If so, what is the solution? Are the Jewish people under some kind of collective spell? Is it only up to Hashem? If it is, how can it be Jewish life as usual, with more tehillim and more chesed and more sadness? How are we accepting yet more trauma, decades after the Rebbe said that Moshiach ba - u'kvar ba? Also, the people of Shechem were collectively punished because they didn't stand up against their leaders. It seems like there is some much more active and responsible role each of us is meant to play here. Do we believe that this is our due? That this is our life, the best we can expect? If so, that seems to be the biggest golus that could be. What will change that? It seems that we can be resilient almost no matter what. Surely it's not, Gd forbid, more trauma that we need to do the job. What is it then??