“Shabbat Parah whispers: this weariness is not failure. It is service.”

The Talmud in Taanit 29a teaches: Mishenichnas Adar marbin besimchah—when Adar enters, we increase joy. Not we acknowledge joy. Not we hope for joy. We increase it. Joy, in Jewish thought, is not merely an emotion, it is a discipline, a deliberate, intentional widening of the heart. Adar is the final month of the Jewish calendar when we count from Nisan, poised on the edge of redemption. It carries within it Purim—the story of a genocidal decree reversed, of a people targeted