PURIM: A Time to Reach Out

Later this month we will observe the holiday of Purim a joyful time in which we celebrate the defeat of those who sought to destroy the Jewish
people as told in the book of Esther. We know it as a time of carnivals, costumes, Purim plays, liturgical parodies and the reading from the Scroll of Esther, complete with cheers, boos and the sound of groggers.

But it is also a time of giving both to the poor and vulnerable in our community, and to our friends and neighbors. Purim is our season of gift-giving. (This may be disheartening to all of you who have just finished paying off your credit card bills from December.) Maimonides teaches that one should give two portions of meat or prepared dishes to friends a
tradition called mishloach manot. In a modern context, we reach out to friends and neighbors with gifts or treats.

For the past four years, one of the most successful projects of our Caring Community has been to reach out to the senior members of our congregation with Purim bags. Many hands
are involved in the preparation. Our second grade Religious School students study the tradition of mishloach manot and decorate each of the bags. Then they make their own greeting cards to put in the bags with the other goodies. In past years, a crew of adults has baked hammentaschen. Candies (sugar-free, of course) are donated.

Then the project moves into its final phase. More than 150 bags are assembled and delivered. The Temple office prepares the list of names and addresses. Longtime Caring Committee member, Debra Ferry, does the tough job of working with the addresses and maps to organize the delivery routes. A crew of volunteers assembles the bags, ties them together with the routing information, and places them in the Temples walk-in refrigerator. Another group takes the bags and hand-delivers each one to homes throughout the Charlotte environs. Lots of hands, lots of work and lots of love go into our Purim bags.

And the result? Each year we are overwhelmed by the response. We usually receive a dozen or so letters often addressed to the second-grader who wrote the enclosed greeting card with words of thanks. More responses arrive in person or with phone calls. It is a time of reaching out, one member of our community to another, binding us together as a Temple family across geographic areas and across the generations.

Would you like to be part of this project? Contact the Caring Community by calling the Temple at (704) 366-1948, extension 111. Wed love to add your hands to this wonderful work.

L’shalom,
Andrew Bernard
Cantor