QUESTION: Mishenichnas Adar Marbin b’Simchah – when Adar comes in, we increase joy. Does it apply even after Purim?
ANSWER: I want to say something to you. It applies to all year round until next erev Purim. And I’ll explain that.
When Adar comes in, you’re expected to stockpile simchah. You have to gain so much happiness, so much optimism, so much fire of enthusiasm in your blood that it’s going to last you until next year Adar. That doesn’t mean you have to stop simchah.
The truth is, if you try to create simchah, at first it’s easier. As the days go by, the effort finally weakens and subsides because the gevuros hanefesh, the willpower, finally weakens, so eventually people again slip down, slip back into the humdrum of everyday life and they forget about simchah. Every year, we renew the effort. But it doesn’t mean that it stops at a certain time. משנכנס אדר, we renew the efforts to gain simchah.
Adar, that’s Purim and it’s Pesach, we should continue all year round. Like they sing in the yeshivos on Purim, “A gantz yahr freilach.” All year you should be happy.
And that’s why the Rama at the end of Hilchos Purim, he says לב וטוב תמיד משתה – a man of a merry heart is always at a party. That’s how he concludes the laws of Purim. So, when people see the laws of Purim and they come to the end, they might be sad. It’s finished with the period of joy.
No, he says, it’s just beginning. You have a לב טוב, that’s de’ah, you learn the truth of Hashem and the truths of the Torah, you learn how to live properly, then you’re happy all the days of your life. It’ll be צדיקים באהלי וישועה רינה קול.
Reprinted from the archives of Toras Avigdor based on a lecture delivered on February 25, 1985.
