Purim

One of the more colorful of the Mishnaic Sages, a personage whose towering image continues to stir the imagination to this very day, is Choni the Circle-maker. What is the connection between Choni the Circle-maker and the Hebrew month of Adar?

The Sages say that the Almighty suspended Mount Sinai above the Israelites like an inverted cask and said, “If you accept the Torah, fine; if not, here will be your grave.” Why did God have to coerce the Children of Israel into receiving the Torah?

Purim serves as an example of what things will be like in the Messianic Age, for, in the time of Purim, the Jews merited seeing the light amidst the darkness, a situation which recalls the verse, “Though I sit in darkness, God is a light for me.”

“The collective body of the Jewish people, which, in the depths of its being, is not separate from Divinity at all” (Rabbi A.I. Kook, Orot Yisrael) is capable of reversing even the deepest and most complete evil, and rectifying it completely.