Purim: Miraculous Coincidences

Contrary to popular belief, in Judaism, we do not celebrate holidays as historical events. There are no commemorating events in the colloquial sense. In fact, nothing we do in Judaism has to do with the past. What concerns us is the present.

The Jewish idea of a memorial day is much like the way a person might remember something emotional, traumatic, or life changing. When individuals reconnect with such episodes from their past in a deep way, they start to feel a bit of what it felt like when the event actually occurred. Their heart beats faster; they begin to sweat. The recollection of their past has an impact on their present. They are not merely remembering what happened, they are re-experiencing it to a certain degree. They are living with a flavor of the event that occurred way-back-when today in the here-and-now.

Today we celebrate the holiday of Purim. Like all holidays, it has its "commemorative" event that we continue to experience annually.

On Purim, we celebrate the salvation of the Jewish people from the Hitler-like Haman who planned to annihilate the Jews in a one-day genocide, an elaborate and well-orchestrated plot that was to involve the participation of the entire Persian empire, which encompassed 127 countries at that time. However, this salvation is not like that of the exodus from Egypt. There are no supernatural miracles, no water turning to blood, no seas splitting. Instead, the salvation of the Jews, and their ensuing victory over those that sought their destruction, took place by way of natural and political events.

What seemed like random and disconnected events could easily be taken as a string of Godless coincidences, leading us to believe that the Jews just got lucky with how things turned out in the Scroll of Esther. In fact, the word "Purim" itself means "lots"—the game of chance, luck, and coincidence—hinting that what this holiday is all about is how we see the concept of "chance" in our lives.

To further stress this point, in the Scroll of Esther, there is actually no direct mention of God. Who would have thought that in the Bible, there'd be an entire section without God showing up? But show up He did, just not in a revealed manner. This is what the Purim holiday is all about—seeing God in the supposed "chance," "luck," and "coincidences" in our lives; seeing God in the natural events and the political maneuvering. For this reason, we dress up in costumes and wear masks on Purim, heightening our awareness of the reality that God is constantly enclothing and masking Himself within the natural and within the mundane. When we internalize this, we come to see that really it's not a question of the miraculous versus the natural, but a question of the revealed miracle versus the hidden miracle.

Let me give you a modern example of what I mean:

In the year 2006, Eric was new to the city of Be'er Sheva. As a recent transfer student to Ben Gurion University, he had been to his volunteer job at the pound to walk dogs, for which he received a discount on dormitories, numerous times. This time, however, upon entering the office, he was met by a young Russian couple staring at him with long, desperate faces. On the counter in front of them was a box that was meowing with a volume that could only come from some very large and powerful kitty lungs. At least that's what he thought before taking a peek at the smallest kitten he had ever seen.

The Russians had been arguing for some time with the head vet of the pound, who refused to take the kitten into their care. Both sides insisted that they had no way of keeping up with its needs at such a young age. The young couple turned to Eric and started begging him to take the kitten and give it a try.

Eric told them told them that he was in the process of looking for a job, had a lot of studying that needed to get done, and had painting to attend to. On top of that, he lived in a dorm room with a really picky and odd roommate. There was no way he could take in a newborn kitten with its umbilical cord still attached.

They just kept looking at him anyway . . . and he kept staring at the kitten sitting in a box from a recently purchased garbage can with its eyes closed, legs wet from a little pee, and begging for food from a mother that was never going to arrive to feed it.

"You're buying the food, a------!" he scolded.

The vet on location gave Eric a quick tutorial in the care of newborn orphan kitties.

Eric was astounded to hear all that needed to be done. He was to feed the kitten every two hours with kitten formula that had to be mixed just right. After eating, he needed give it a belly massage to help the digestive system along. In order for the kitten to go to the bathroom, he required a little tickling of his still undefinable parts.

Eric realized this was going to be some hard work. He was even going to need to wake up every two hours in the middle of the night for feedings . . . just like a human mother does for her child.

And that's just how it was. Eric became this kitten's mother.

In the middle of the night, the kitten would cry to be fed, cry to be drained of waste, and most heart-rending of all, he would cry just to be held. After the first two feedings in his first night, Eric decided to stop putting him back in the box and just let him sleep curled up like a fetus on his arm.

So how did Eric continue with his life? With his schedule? With his classes?

Well, leaving Samson (Eric named the kitten after Samson from the Bible for his toughness) at home was certainly not an option, so Eric took him to classes. One would think that teachers wouldn't accept a crying little box in their class, but when the said cat is the size of a large mouse, it tugs the heartstrings of even the hardest instructor; one of the lecturers even held him while she gave her lesson. Eric's favorite thing about having Samson around was that he got all kinds of love all over campus. Samson was a total "chick magnet."

A full week passed, the bags under Eric's eyes had faded, and the two of them—Eric and Samson—seemed to have found their routine. The only problem was that he had not grown at all in that time. It seemed Samson was eating less and less instead of more and more.

These were not good signs, and Eric knew it was time to take him to the vet. And so he did . . . three days in a row. The first day, they told him Samson was doing all right. The second they told him Samson had an eye infection. The third day, Samson . . .

The other side of this story is more personal for Eric.

Six years earlier, Eric's mother had passed away from emphysema after a full ten years of battling it. Eric, in his short life up until that point, had never seen a more miserable situation. In an email to friends, he said, "There is nothing in the world like watching a human being die a slow and painful death—especially when it is your mother."

I mention this because Eric's kitten and his mother worked together to remind him of a few important things: In Judaism, when an immediate member of your family passes away, you are to say "Kaddish," which is a declaration of the some of the basic tenets of Judaism, annually on the Hebrew anniversary of their death. This elevates their soul and makes their transition into the afterlife more comfortable and rewarding.

Eric, not having the strongest Jewish background and instinctively trying to ignore past events that were difficult for him to deal with, neglected paying too much attention to when exactly this Hebrew anniversary of his mother's death actually fell out.

But, when he woke up to Samson's usual cry and found him freezing cold and limp (but alive), he was reminded immediately what it means to deal with the death of a loved one. Eric picked him up and tried to feed him, but he refused. He held him gently as he was barely breathing. He could not believe what he was seeing. He was looking down at his poor kitten and seeing his mother all over again. He looked at this unfortunate, innocent baby animal and apologized over and over again for not doing an even better job than he did. He begged it for forgiveness, and prepared to take him back to the vet.

Eric brought Samson back to the vet in the same box in which he had received him. He set the box down on the vet's table, and told him to help.

"There is nothing to do; he won't live," the vet told him.

"I know . . . he needs another kind of help," Eric said.

The vet agreed, but insisted that Eric leave him there, but Eric refused. Then he insisted that Eric at least leave the room, but Eric refused again. Then Eric watched him fill a needle, and a minute later Samson was quietly laid in his box.

Eric bawled like a child, and the vet tried to console him:

"You did the very best you could. I am sure of it. I tell you the truth, there is no food on the market, no human being in the world that could have replaced this cat's mother. There is nothing in this world that can replace anyone's mother, ever." He went on for another five minutes softly telling Eric how mothers are so important, and never in our lives will there ever be a replacement, and Eric just kept filling up one paper towel after another. He knew the vet was right. Never in his life could he really have replaced Samson's mother, and never in his life will he have a real replacement for his own mother.

He took Samson back with the box to his dormitories, and picked out a nice sunny spot under a tree where he could bury him. He brought along a spoon and dug a hole of perfect depth, lowered him in, and refilled the hole. He cut out a piece from the box for a tombstone, and wrote on it a long message.

Next, Eric thought to conduct a bit of a Jewish funeral service and made sure to read the "Kaddish" and to think about both this poor kitten and his poor mother.

After this emotional episode, Eric made his way to the computer room, where he found his brother online. He shared the entire saga with him, to which his brother replied, "Weird that Samson should die on the same day as Mom."

Eric was floored. As he put it, "What are the chances I would be pushed toward performing the required rites at the right time in such a manner?"

Eric went on to describe his feelings:

Every day, I believe more and more in there being a conscious and active creator in this world. Though I really do fight it sometimes, every day another "coincidence" or clue comes around to push me even closer to this idea. What is more, I have a really hard time figuring out what to do with that information as it comes in. Do I follow the religion of my ancestors, find something new, or just try to live a good life according to a generally accepted standard of morals? For me, the jury's still out on that one. But having caught yet another clue that points directly to Judaism, I am left more open to that option than anything else.

My friends, a little note about this story: it took place on the holiday of Purim, the time of revealing and experiencing God in the supposed natural coincidences, in the lotteries of life.

Happy Purim! May we all be blessed to see God's hand in the nitty-gritty details of our lives.