Last night was both the start of Purim and a chance to see a lunar eclipse. As the past few weeks of serious winter have taken their toll on my small reserves of optimism, I thought I'd take a break from all the electronic overstimulus that surrounds me. Prying myself away from the computer, phone and television, I marched into the bedroom with a clear purpose: to see an amazing natural phenomena. I turned our little bedroom bench around to face the window, pulled back the curtains already drawn to keep the heat in, set my feet on the windowsill, and watched.
At first I could barely see anything. Even though the trees are still bare, with just buds to hint at the possibility of spring, the branches themselves obscured the first few minutes of moonrise. Once I caught a glimpse of the moon, the shiny edge helping me place it in a cloudy sky, it became easier. As I waited and watched, the moon rose slowly above the tree line and was clearly visible with the shadow covering most of its surface. To me, armed with foreknowledge and safe in the luxury of a modern home, it was interesting and beautiful. But as I watched, I began to wonder how other people in former times, lacking both understanding of what was happening and comfortable surroundings in which to ponder, would have viewed this event. It occurred to me that probably it was terrifying, or at least very threatening, to see the expected order of things interrupted. Did they scream and cry? pray? head for shelter elsewhere? And when the moon was unveiled again, was that enough to calm their fears, or did they ever after live in fear that one of the great lights of the world they knew could disappear? That led quite seamlessly to my wondering whether all of my fears were in fact much like those of the ancient people whose lives I had been contemplating. That perhaps whatever invoked such fear in me was at bottom as explicable and natural as the eclipse; I just lacked the proper perspective to see it that way.
And what does any of this have to do with Purim? To me, that holiday, the remembrance of Jewish lives saved by the intervention of Esther and Mordecai, is so much about the hidden face of Gd. And just on the eve of this holiday celebrating the happy outcome of events that had looked to be a complete disaster until almost the very end, almost the genocide of Jews, the moon taking time to show me her hidden face, which was then slowly revealed, seemed such a neat and orderly lesson that coincidence was not enough explanation. As I looked back over the past few difficult and disruptive weeks, the moon seemed to speak to me personally, telling me and showing me that disasters pass; that fears can be overcome; that the great natural plan, certainly beyond my comprehension, does indeed work for the good of all.
