Get Your Purim On DOUBLE-TIME

*This essay is dedicated in memory of Rebbetzin Rashi Minkowicz who taught thousands how to add things up right

I’m a math idiot. I can totally blame my 4th grade teacher for forcing me to do math problems that I swear I couldn’t understand.  My future was never going to be sitting in an office crunching numbers, preparing tax returns or working as an accountant.

I spent my entire high school career stealing math tests and charming my way into the math teacher’s hearts so they would pass me, even though I swear I didn’t deserve that B+ when every grade on every math test was under 49%.

Sometimes I even believe that 1+1=4.  I know it’s a problem.

It’s actually a miracle that I don’t get lost in the world because how the hell are you supposed to count on anything when 1+1=2 and yet it is still false? Do you get my issue here?

We believe while we are in grammar school that everything is equal, is fair, is just, but the honest truth is, that that equation just doesn’t work out AT ALL in real life. There is no such thing as 1 plus 1 equaling two! It doesn’t EXIST! Which is why I could never learn math and was forced to hijack test answers.

How do we add things up after having a week in the middle of the one Jewish month, when we are called upon to seek joy and laughter, humanity has experienced the opposite? In a month where we are meant to enjoy not one fit of joy, but two, because we receive two Adars, two months of the same name, we are called upon to emit DOUBLE joy, and yet we have seen more than double tragic events hit, and we are left feeling anything but joyous. Suddenly two plus two equals ZERO. We are DOUBLY depleted. No one can sleep at night as we are all hyper focused on the pain these families have been dealt. 239 families in hopeless disarray over the disappearance of their family members who boarded a plane set to nowhere, young mothers and fathers who have died suddenly, the news is filled with tragic events, and yet we are told to act happy despite of it?

We are all having a hard time with this month. And yet we wake up and listen to the sounds of the beating drum. We hear the call of music, and we realize that really we are all living a constant dream of unsettledness, and we wonder does joy really change things, does attitude really have the possibility to overcome the pain of destruction, the frustrations of our lack of understanding?  When we realize we don’t have control over anything except over ourselves, suddenly that becomes the one thing we CAN count on.  Counting isn’t so hard when you are NOT counting correctly. 

Maybe that’s the hard part, doing the opposite of what we want to do- doing the opposite double-time.  Because when we do the opposite, we are forced to believe in one plus one equaling four. We are forced to realize the harder to overcome the negative is how the double positive occurs. Come over to the stupid- (brilliant) side and lets suspend our understanding of math for just today and allow one plus one to equal 14!

Let’s put one foot in front of the other, hold another person’s hand, and dance to change the energy. For when we decide to dance in the face of adversity, suddenly that energy is not depleting, it doubles at like an enormous mathematical rate…this theory still makes me wonder why I’m not a mathematician. Two Adars, means we can take half of our pain and not just turn it into not ONE whole but maybe even 4 Wholes! How do you like them math problems now? Lets look at life with a little more discarded logic and math will finally make sense- maybe I can even go on to become an accountant. For Realz.

Happy Purim to all, Keep postin them crazy dancing party dress up pics on Facebook, we gotta rock this month DOUBLETIME!