Purim

It is a mitzva to train children to perform mitzvot, and from the moment a boy or girl reaches the stage at which he or she understands the Megilla and can listen to it as halakha requires, one must train them to do so.

According to Rashi and Rambam, women and men are equally obligated in the mitzva to read the Megilla, and a woman may read the Megilla for her family. In contrast, Behag and Rabbeinu Ĥananel maintain that a woman’s obligation differs from that of a man: Men must read the Megilla, whereas women must hear it.

One must read the Megilla at night and again during the day, to commemorate the fact that the Jews cried out to God in their time of need during the day and at night .

Everyone is obligated in the mitzva of reading the Megilla: men, women, and converts. One who hears someone else read the Megilla discharges his obligation. The main purpose of reading the Megilla is to publicize the miracle and demonstrate that God rules and oversees the world, directing everything for the best.

There is a unique halakha pertaining to Purim: it has two dates. In most places, Purim is celebrated on the fourteenth of Adar, while in cities that were surrounded by a wall at the time of Yehoshua bin Nun, and in Aĥashverosh’s capital city of Shushan, it is celebrated on the fifteenth.

Even though the joy over the salvation was great, it was initially unclear how the event should be marked. Esther wrote to the Sages, “Write an account of me for future generations,” that is, write down the Purim story and include it as one of the holy books of the Tanakh.

If we delve deeper, we will see that Haman’s decree actually stirred the singular quality, the segula, of the Jewish people. The decree made it clear that the Jewish people were willing to make great sacrifices in order to hold onto their faith. Nevertheless, they did not try to escape their Jewish destiny.

The joy of Purim expresses the eternal sanctity of the Jewish people. Even though this sanctity is sometimes hidden by our sins, it never disappears.

People customarily give charity in the month of Adar in commemoration of the half-shekel that each individual would donate to the Temple, in Adar, to fund public offerings.

The custom of all Jewry, since the geonic period, is to fast on the thirteenth of Adar in commemoration of the fasts that Esther observed before approaching King Aĥashverosh to annul the decree against the Jewish peopleand the fast that the Jews observed on the thirteenth of Adar of that year.