Dust off Your Megaphones, Time to Amplify the Joy

We returned to school this week from February break on Rosh Chodesh Adar, meaning that Chagigat HaPijama (our annual PJ Day that is celebrated on the first day back from break to honor the Israelites' triumph over the forces of business casual) fell out on the first day of the most joyful month of the Jewish year! Why all the joy and excitement (beyond the obvious amazing coordination of the Jewish and Gregorian calendars)?

There is a well-known phrase that surfaces every year at this time: Mishenichnas Adar marbin b'simcha — when the month of Adar enters, joy increases. Many of us know it as a kind of seasonal mood-lifter, a Jewish permission slip to celebrate. But its origins tell a richer, more complex story.

The phrase comes not from Tractate Megillah, but from Tractate Ta'anit (29a) in the Talmud — and it appears in a surprising context. The Talmud is discussing all the tragedy that has befallen the Jewish people over time, catalogued month by month. It is in that same passage that we learn: when Av arrives, sadness increases — and when Adar arrives, joy increases. The rabbis took this so seriously that they gleaned from it practical implications for legal disputes, instructing Jews to adjudicate disputes during Adar, because the month itself carries auspicious energy.

What strikes me about this framing is how much it matters where the joy lives. It doesn't exist in a vacuum of perpetual happiness. It emerges in direct contrast to suffering, in the honest acknowledgment that life contains both. One beautiful commentary from Rav Shagar puts it powerfully: "More than once, joy has been perceived as superficial in comparison to tragedy and melancholy... Yet it appears that the profundity of Jewish joy is found specifically in the abyss of the broken heart. However, this is a broken heart that overpowers itself... that knows how to turn hopelessness into faith and sadness into ecstasy." (Sefaria translation)

This may also be why the Rabbis draw such a deep connection between Purim and Yom Kippur — Yom Kippurim, a day that some read as Yom K'Purim, a day like Purim. Both holidays, we are told, will endure even in the messianic era when all other holidays are no longer needed. They are not seasonal celebrations — they are permanent features of the human condition.

There is another piece of this that I find especially beautiful. The Chasidic text Irin Kadishin on Purim notes that the language of the Talmud is deliberate: not yesh (there is joy) or boreh (create joy), but marbin — increase. Joy already exists in the world. It is already here, planted alongside suffering as a natural feature of human experience. The work of Adar is not to manufacture something from nothing — it is to find the joy that is already present and amplify it. As the commentary puts it: God already helped us by putting it into the world.

That is both a relief and a call to action.

The Rabbis debate just how much to celebrate Purim (which is itself hilarious), and instruct us to celebrate "Ad delo yada" - until we can no longer distinguish between Haman and Mordechai. This is the ultimate expression of this amplification. Joy turned up so high that it dissolves fear, overwhelms dread, and reorders our sense of what is possible.

Nowhere does this work quite like it does in a Jewish day school.

If you walked down 89th Street this week, you would have felt it even at arrival. Pajama Day with onesies on four-year-olds and fifty-year-olds alike. Tiny masks on tiny faces and larger ones alike. Mustaches on every adolescent in the building. Children jumping in colored light and analyzing their shadows in Science class. Teachers dressed as clowns. Students pulling off delightful tricks. Everyone, together, turning up the volume on joy.

We invite you to join us; just grab a proverbial megaphone. You don't need to make this complicated. We are not expecting everyone to have a different wig for each day of the month, or to own fluorescent cowboy boots that only come out in Adar, or to have special Purim glasses — which, I should note, unfortunately needed to be updated this year to accommodate the sad human condition of progressive lenses. (Some of us may or may not have all of the above. Beit Rabban employees, of course, are expected to meet this standard as a condition of their employment.) Something simple is more than enough. Wear a onesie to drop-off — a Kindergarten parent already showed us how it's done. Send us your wacky hair pictures on Happy Hair Day this Monday. Send costume photos for our Friday pre-Purim celebration, and we will weave you into our merriment. Imagine shenanigans with your child that they can bring to class. Tuck something ridiculous into their lunchbox.

The pain in the world is not hard to find. The joy needs our amplification. May this be a month of increasing joy for all of us. May we notice it, even when it is only a glimmer, and turn it up so high, so loud, so bright, that even in progressive lenses, we cannot miss it.