Hidden Mazal - Black Joy and the Defiance of Adar

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 for annihilation who instead rose to celebration. The verse in the Megillah describes it as the month that was transformed “from sorrow to gladness, from mourning to festivity.” That reversal is not incidental. It is the essence.

Haman, descendant of Amalek, sought the moment of maximum vulnerability. Amalek had attacked Israel when we were faint and weary, newly freed from Egypt, faith still tender. Haman followed the same logic. The Temple lay in ruins. Exile had dulled the glow of overt miracles. Seventy years had passed since Jeremiah’s prophecy, and redemption had not arrived. Surely—he calculated—this was the hour.

He cast lots. The lot fell in Adar.

The Midrash records his satisfaction: Moses died in Adar. The shepherd gone, the flock exposed. But he did not know what the Talmud reveals—that Moses was born on that very same seventh of Adar. Death and birth intertwined. Apparent vulnerability concealing hidden strength.

Adar thus becomes the calendar’s quiet rebellion against determinism. Haman believed in astrology, in fixed mazal, in inevitability. Judaism answers: there is no mazal for Yisrael. 

For African American Jews, this theology is not abstract. It is lived.

There is a long memory in Black communities of decrees pronounced from above—social, legal, cultural—declaring limits, casting lots on destinies. And there is also a long memory of reversal. Of joy emerging not after struggle has ended, but in the very midst of it.

Purim’s miracle is peculiar. G'd’s name does not appear explicitly in the Megillah. No seas split. No manna descends. The salvation unfolds through political maneuvering, hidden courage, fasting, communal solidarity. It is precisely the kind of miracle that can be missed if one is waiting for thunder.

That subtlety matters. African American Jewish experience often occupies the hidden spaces of communal life—seen and unseen, present yet questioned. Purim affirms that hiddenness is not abandonment, nor is concealment absence.

In fact, our sages suggest something even more audacious: that the joy of Purim surpasses other festivals because it celebrates survival at a low point. Pesach commemorates open redemption. Shavuot commemorates revelation. But Purim commemorates the durability of the relationship when conditions are bleak.

It can even be argued, that the essential bond between the Jewish People and the Holy One is most visible in exile. When we are scattered, diminished, doubted—and still sustained—that endurance itself is testimony.

This is why Adar does not simply permit joy. It commands it.

The mazal of Adar is fish—dagim. Fish dwell beneath the surface, immune to the “evil eye,” sustained by water. Torah is compared to water. A people immersed in Torah life—even quietly, even without spectacle—remains alive.

Black joy, at its most profound, has always shared this subterranean quality. It is not denial of pain, it is defiance of erasure. It is laughter that refuses to become a dirge. 

Smile, and the heart may follow. Increase joy, and the soul expands.