PURIM.

A message to the beloved on this important evening.

Purim Sameach, beloved. I’m writing this as one of your own in spirit and in responsibility, with love for the Ḥadashí Jewish community and deep respect for every observant Jewish household preparing to hear the megillah, give generously, and turn the night into gratitude.

Purim is here again, and with it comes that particular kind of Jewish joy that carries memory inside it, the kind that knows exactly what it costs to still be here.

Purim lands on the heart as celebration and as testimony. The story in Esther is not folklore. It is the recurring reality of a people who have been targeted, threatened, scapegoated, and still preserved.

We do not observe Purim because we are naive about the world. We observe Purim because we understand the world and we refuse to surrender our spirit to it. We refuse to let murderous intent become normal.

We refuse to let fear become our theology.

HIDDEN AND UNHIDDEN

The megillah never names Elōhîm, and the faithful hear Him anyway. That silence is not emptiness. It is a spiritual education. It teaches us how to live when heaven feels quiet and history feels loud.

It teaches us how to recognize providence through timing, through reversals, through the sudden opening of a door that had been locked for years. It teaches us how to keep praying and keep moving, even when we cannot see the next step.

Within Ḥadashí life, Purim reinforces something we already carry: God remains present in the unseen layers of reality. His governance does not require narration.

His faithfulness does not require applause. The question becomes ours. The moment becomes ours. Esther stands as proof that hidden seasons still contain purpose, and that purpose eventually demands action.

COURAGE SERVING LIFE

Purim is a celebration of survival, and it is also a confrontation with genocidal imagination.

Haman’s logic never died. It keeps returning through actual antisemitism, through empire, through systems that treat certain lives as disposable, through respectable institutions that launder hatred into policy, and through crowds that learn to chant for cruelty with clean hands.

Purim trains us to identify that spirit early and to resist it without hesitation. It trains us to stay clear-eyed about power. It trains us to honor the Esther-moment when a person realizes that silence can injure, and speech can protect.

Esther does not become holy because she is dramatic. She becomes holy because she accepts responsibility for the lives attached to her position.

GENEROSITY WITH PURPOSE

Purim joy is not fragile. It is not performative. It is not escapism. It is the joy of a people who know what it means to be hunted and still choose to sing.

It is a joy that eats and drinks and laughs with a full awareness of the grave, and it is exactly that awareness that makes the feast meaningful.

Esther 9:22 gives the architecture: feasting, rejoicing, gifts to one another, and gifts to the poor. Purim requires a table, and Purim requires open hands.

So as you prepare mishloach manot, let it be real love, not a social formality. As you give matanot la’evyonim, give with urgency. Treat it as sacred work.

Someone’s rent is sacred. Someone’s groceries are sacred. Someone’s safety is sacred. A joyful feast that forgets the poor is a feast that forgot Esther 9.

WHILE THE WORLD WEEPS

This is where I need us to be fully awake. Purim is observed in a world where whole communities live under siege, displacement, bombardment, sanctions, and constant threat.

Purim is celebrated by Jews who live with fear today, and it is also celebrated in regions where Palestinians endure daily dehumanization, and where our cousins in Irân live under the shadow of war-talk, collective punishment, and outside domination.

That reality sits in the same world as our costumes and our wine. It sits at the edge of the same table.

Purim teaches a moral reflex: we do not accept the logic of erasure against anyone. We reject both antisemitism and zionism with full force, and we reject the machinery that crushes other peoples, because the God who preserves Israel also judges violence, arrogance, and oppression.

We will never be a community that celebrates deliverance for ourselves and grows indifferent to the destruction of others. Purim makes indifference impossible for anyone who actually read the story and understood the danger.

So I’m wishing joy to every Jewish home today, including Jewish homes in Palestine and across the region, and I’m also naming the human beings around them whose lives have been treated as negotiable.

The Jewish commitment to life carries an obligation to see the life of the neighbor. Purim sharpens that obligation. It does not soften it.

TO MY BELOVED

Ḥadashí Jewish life carries a particular assignment right now. We are building a way of being Jewish that stays anchored in the sacred while refusing the captivity of propaganda and empire.

We are building a moral seriousness that can bless our people without becoming blind to the suffering of other peoples. We are building a community that refuses to trade conscience for belonging.

Purim strengthens that project. It tells us that identity can be preserved without becoming cruel.

It tells us that survival can be honored without becoming supremacist. It tells us that the Most High can deliver, and the delivered must live with dignity.

A FINAL BLESSING

To everyone observing: may your reading of Esther deepen your courage. May your laughter be clean. May your se’udah be full. May your giving be abundant. May your home be protected.

May your children grow up with joy, clarity, and a spine. May every elder feel honored. May every lonely person receive a knock at the door and a plate in the hand.

Purim is the feast of unseen victory. Evil casts lots, and Elōhîm governs outcomes. The people rejoice, and the people remember. And we keep choosing life.

Purim Sameach.

With love and light,

Ramíel ben-Yefeh Sālúq (Rājèmi)

(רַג׳ֵמִי) ‎שַׂר רָמִיאֵל בֶּן יֶפֶה גַּלְיָה מִבֵּית סָלוּק