Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness. We're now in the month of Adar.
משנכנס אדר מרבים בשמחה
When the month of Adar enters, we increase our happiness. The question is, how? It doesn't say what to do. It doesn't say to eat more, it doesn't say to drink, it doesn't say anything except Marbim B’Simcha. So what do we need to do to?
The Gemara tells us in Masechet Megila that the pasuk says,
לַיְּהוּדִ֕ים הָֽיְתָ֥ה אוֹרָ֖ה וְשִׂמְחָ֑ה וְשָׂשֹׂ֖ן וִיקָֽר׃
The Jewish people had light, happiness, gladness and glory.
The Gemara explains that each one of these four things refers to something. Orah/ light refers to Torah, Simcha/happiness refers to Yom Tov, Sasson refers to the Brit Milah and Yakar/glory refers to Tefilin.
Rav Wolbe asks, why doesn’t it just tell us what we have- Torah, Yom Tov, and Brit Milah and Tefilin. Why does it use these terms that we have to then decipher? He explains that it’s because the Jews always had Torah. They always had Yom Tov. They always had Brit Milah. They always had Tefilin. The problem was, they didn't appreciate that Torah was light. They didn't appreciate that Yom Tov was true happiness. And they didn't appreciate the true joy of being a Jew, which is symbolized by Brit Milah. They didn't appreciate the glory of Tefilin. They had everything, but they didn't appreciate what they had. This is a very important lesson. When we say Mi’Shenichnas Adar Marbim B’Simcha, that doesn't mean we’re adding or doing anything. You're not adding meat and wine. You're doing the regular things that you always do, but you are appreciating what you're doing.
That's the real key to happiness. It's not from adding new things, it's appreciating the existing things.
I heard a story from Chacham Yehuda Ades, that has different sources and different variations, but the way I heard it is: A Jewish man who lived in Yerushalayim had a dream that there was a pot of gold buried under a bridge somewhere in Vienna. The man saved up money for months and went to this bridge in Vienna. He walked back and forth by the bridge, looking for any sign of where this treasure might be buried. A guard saw what was going on and got a little suspicious. He said, “Jew, what are you doing? Why do you keep walking around. What are you checking? What are you looking for?”
The Jewish man told him about his dream and explained that he had come to look for the treasure. The guard replied, “You silly Jews, you believe in dreams. I also had a dream. I had a dream last night that on Alfandry Street #25, there was a pot of gold buried under the kitchen sink. Do you think I'm going to go there and start looking for it?”
Alfandry 25 was the Jewish man’s address! He went back home, dug beneath his kitchen sink, and sure enough, there was a pot of gold. That's the mashal. The nimshal is that sometimes we think that we're going to find the treasure far away in some distant land, but the treasure is really in our own home. We just have to uncover it. We have to appreciate the treasures that we have, and that's what we do in the month of Adar. That's the power of Purim- to realize you had all those four things, but you didn't realize what you really had.
Our job is to appreciate that we have a house and a bed and a kitchen, and hopefully a family and a lot of other good things. But do we really appreciate what we have? That's the secret to simcha and that's what we can get to in the month of Adar.
