Adloyada???

עדלידע.  Adloyada.  To the non-Israeli who gives me the correct definition of this word go all our remaining chametz....

I’ll give you a few moments, and a few lines.

Keep on trying. 

You can get it.

OK.  The definition of adloyada is “Purim carnival.”  What?????

Here, the beauty of life in a Jewish country, with a Jewish language, at work.  Incorporating the purpose, the gestalt, of a word, within the word itself.  It’s simply unbelievable.

Let’s go back to the Talmud, tractate Megilla. 

“A person is obligated to drink on Purim until he does not know the difference between ‘cursed be Haman’ and ‘blessed be Mordechai’.”  Ad de-lo ya-da bayn arur Haman v’baruch Mordechai.

Albeit with considerable disagreement over manner and extent, the rabbis want us to drink, party and rest our minds on Purim.  “Until he does not know.”  To release the cognitive discipline of our lives, at least for a day.  To go with the heart, with what is different – hafuch – on this day.

Men dress up as women.  Women dress up as men.  Chilonim (the secular) don the garb of dati’im (the religious), and vice versa.  And, here in Israel, we go to parades where everything is turned on its head.

People really like it.  In fact, amazingly, Purim in Israel is longer than Pesach.  The stores start selling costumes months before.  Schools upend the normal order of things – with fun activities, dress-ups, spoofs – the minute the month of Purim (Adar) begins (2 weeks before Purim).  In fact, I don’t think our daughter had any academic studies at all for 2 weeks!

People clearly need to party here, to carpe diem.  And G-d knows they’re entitled.  They’re entitled to turn things on their head and pretend, in a sense, that they are elsewhere.  In mind, spirit and body.

Adloyada is at the heart of what Purim means to Israel.  Perhaps a “Purim carnival” is good enough for the Diaspora.  But not for here, where the Jewish past and present live.  In love, in tension.  Trying to make a life together.

My chametz inventory is getting low.  So whoever guessed correctly, get here soon….

A sneak preview:  Pesach preparation is much less insane in Israel than it is in the United States….