There’s a war going on. You can hear the enemy coming. So, you have to prepare yourself for battle. You put on your army pants and heavy duty boots. You cover your torso with a thick, bullet proof vest, lined with several grenades, a dangerously sharp knife, and a handgun. You place your military helmet over your head, and you take your automatic machine gun under your arm. You’re ready to go.
You head out toward the sound of the fighting to try to find a strategic position. You station yourself behind the wall of a building. The enemy is getting closer. Pretty soon they’re going to come around the corner and it will be time to fire. Your heart is pounding. Your hands are sweating profusely. They will be there at any moment.
Finally, you catch sight of the enemy and you pull the trigger and . . . Boom! – a large pink elephant balloon pops out of your machine gun. Your enemy is totally baffled. You quickly tie up the balloon and hand it to him, “Here, take this for your sweet little daughter back home.” Then, you pull the trigger again and . . . Boom! – a cute blue doggy balloon pops out. “This one’s for your son.” You take a third shot and a big red heart pops out. “This one’s for your wife – don’t forget about her. Here, I even have a couple chocolate grenades you can give her and some laffy-taffy bullets for your friends.”
By this time, your enemy has no idea what’s going on. He thought he’s supposed to be trying to kill you, but now his hands are full of really cool balloons and funny presents for his family and friends. After a moment or two, he gets his wits about him and remembers that this is, indeed, a very serious war. So, he goes to retrieve his gun. He laughs out loud thinking that he’s got your number, since all you have is chocolate grenades and a balloon popping machine gun. But it’s too late – you already pulled out your hand gun and shot him down!
Watch out for the bombs of depression!
Although we may not realize it, everywhere we go we are in danger. Even in the comfort of our own homes we are not safe. World War 3 is already upon us – it is the battle between happiness and depression that takes place inside our mind. On the one hand, we have a slew of self destructive thoughts that are trying to knock us down. Each one is like a bullet whose mission is to penetrate our heart and vital organs and cut us off from the Source of all life. If, G-d forbid, one of them manages to do internal damage, it can take us weeks, or even months to recover. We lay in bed without enough strength to get up. We sleep for hours upon hours and still feel exhausted. We are like the Energizer Bunny without any batteries.
This is the force of Amalek – our wicked enemy. Nowadays, the war with Amalek is on the spiritual battlefield. When we’re strong and confident, and we know Hashem is with us, then he leaves us alone. He knows that he doesn’t have the power to take us down when we’re attached to the brilliant light of our neshamah. So, he waits on the sidelines until we are weak and vulnerable. He waits until he sees that our debt is piling up, we have a serious illness in our family, or we’re struggling in our marriage, G-d forbid, and then he shoots us suddenly with bullets of sadness and anxiety. He waits until we’ve gotten stuck in a cycle of sin, and then he drops on us bombs of despair. Watch out!
Our enemy wants us to be too serious, so we have to respond with super-duper silliness.
So, how do we fight back? At the end of the day, the war only begins once we’re already the underdog. Therefore, at such times, it is very hard to combat him head on. We can certainly try to strengthen ourselves to think positively about ourselves and fire back at him bullets of self confidence. We can and should load our guns with happiness by focusing on the good deeds and mitzvos we’ve done. However, very often, Amalek’s artillery is so great that we don’t have enough firepower to attack him directly.
But there is another way to take him down. Our biggest mistake is that we take the war with Amalek too seriously. We feel like we have to work very hard to be sincerely happy on the deepest level in order to defeat him. However, this is playing directly into his hand. The battlefield of seriousness is Amalek’s home turf. So instead, our best strategy is to completely transform the arena and make light of the whole thing. We should make believe that we’re not fighting a real war, rather we’re just actors in a hilarious comedy show. We should pinch our nose tightly and speak with a funny, nasally voice. We should tell silly jokes. When we see Amalek entering the stage of our mind, we should get up and do the chicken dance or sing a hilarious childrens’ song. We should dress up like a clown or start talking gibberish.
This may seem like a very bizarre and non traditional way of handling the greatest enemy of the Jewish people, but in fact, it is not at all a new idea. Once upon a time, perhaps the greatest soldier in Jewish history -- Dovid Hamelech -- was captured by the Philistines. They brought him tied in chains and surrounded by thousands of soldiers to the city of their king. This seemed like it would surely be the end, G-d forbid. How could he escape? How could he take on an entire army by himself?
Dovid knew that it wasn’t possible to fight them directly. However, he had another strategy. As they entered the gates of the city, he started drooling all over the place and acting crazy. When the king of the Philistines saw this, he told his soldiers to let him go. Obviously, this lunatic was absolutely no threat to his kingdom. And thus, Dovid was released and he escaped unharmed.
This is the amazing effect that our silliness has on Amalek. It distracts him and takes him out of his mode of battle. He doesn’t know how to fight with us when we’re goofing around. His goal is to stop us from serving Hashem, but now, we’ve stopped ourselves. His goal is to make us crazy and forget about our purpose in this world, but now, with our outrageous comedy act, we’ve shown him that there’s nothing left for him to do. So, he let's go of his hold over our mind. He loosens the chains of depression that keep our thoughts tied down.
After our enemy is distracted, we can blow him away with our real simcha guns.
Once we see this, then we must seize the opportunity. This is our chance to pull out our happy gun and blow him away. After spending some time pretending to be joyful, now we can bust out the real bombs of simcha and do some heavy duty damage to our depression. With a clear mind, we can concentrate deeply on the beauty of our mitzvos and reveal their spectacular light. We can see how unbelievably precious it is that we keep Shabbos each week and express our deep emunah in the Master of the Universe. We can realize the immeasurable nachas that we give to Hashem when we say brachos over our foods and reveal that He is the One who created all of existence. We can remind ourselves just how lucky we are that Hashem gave us the invaluable gift of having intimate conversations with Him at least three times a day in shemoneh esrei (or many more if you include every moment of hisbodedus that we do.) When we truly contemplate the fact that Hashem chose each one of us to be a member of His treasured people, we realize that we’re holding an atom bomb that has the power to destroy all of the forces of evil in our head.
Not only that, but with a free mind, we can jump in and do something to serve Hashem. We can grab a Sefer Tehillim and say a chapter with all of our heart. We can immerse ourselves in the pure water of a mikvah or in the astounding wisdom of Gemarra. We can take some money out of our pocket and give it to a poor person with a smile on our face. Being involved in avodas Hashem brings out the true inner joy of our neshamah. It satisfies our soul by connecting it to its ultimate purpose in this world.
Through this, we catch Amalek off guard. Before he realizes what’s happening, we are really happy, even on the inside. Our shield of confidence and self-worth is back up, so his bullets can’t penetrate our defenses. Before he knows what’s going on, we’ve destroyed his weapons of depression. We’ve chopped off his arms that strangle us with despair by renewing our hope that we really can change and do teshuvah. All of a sudden, the underdog has been victorious!
On Purim we get drunk and act silly in order to realize how lucky we are to be Jews.
This is the reason that we read Parshas Zachor – which contains the commandment to wipe out Amalek – on the Shabbos before Purim. Now’s the time to remind ourselves to get our silly guns out and prepare for war. Purim is the celebration of the downfall of Haman, a descendant of Amalek, who tried to destroy the Jewish people. So too nowadays, he is the one who tries to capture our mind with sadness and prevent us from serving Hashem. However, through our outrageous celebrations on Purim, we shoot him down with foolishness. Instead of taking him seriously, we make a huge mockery of him by dressing in ridiculous costumes, drinking lots of wine, and doing outlandish things. As the famous children’s song goes, “You’ve gotta shake, shake, shake your sillies out!”
On the other hand, the Sages say that it was on Purim that the Jews received the Torah with love. From this we see that the ultimate purpose of being silly is to come to the true inner joy of being a Jew and having the Torah. Through this we can pull the real trigger on Amalek and free ourselves from our brokenness and depression even after Purim is over. Through this we can attach ourselves to the deep source of true simcha that can carry us through all of the most difficult challenges and suffering that we face in our lives.
Therefore, in the midst of our silliness this Purim, once our mind is finally liberated from the darkness of Amalek, we should take a moment and remember just how lucky we are to be Jews. We should thank Hashem for giving us the opportunity to fulfill His precious mitzvos. We should praise Him for our portion in This World and in the Next World. And we should shoot a real laffy-taffy bullet at Haman and win the war!
