PHS Family,
It’s hard to believe that Purim is just around the corner. In many ways, the entire year has felt like Purim. We never even had the chance to take off our masks! As the year comes full circle, our time at "The Lot" will be coming to an end in the coming weeks as construction is set to begin. This spray-painted former junkyard has been our spiritual home since July! It has served us well and played an integral part in sustaining our community during these challenging times, and we’re in the process of lining up our next outdoors home.
This opportunity was made possible by the generosity of Elie Pariente, owner of the property. Elie graciously allowed us to use the space rent free for nearly 8 months. As a way to show our gratitude to Elie and his family we've decided to dedicate our shul's first ever Megillah in his honor. This is a fitting gift as Purim shows us the power of Jewish unity in troubled times, and this Megillah is a reminder of that radical kindness and connection between Jews. I would also like to thank Adam Zucker for connecting us with Elie.
Please join our Megillah Campaign by clicking here.
This year our celebration will certainly be different, but I am confident that we can still experience a meaningful and safe Purim. We will be in touch about some of those changes (including live readers, streamed reading), and you can reference the times below. We will also be sending communal mishloach manot (more info below). Stay tuned as well for other fun Purim activities.
In the meantime, one of the more significant changes that we wanted to flag, is that all members of the community regardless of gender will be reading from the megillah for the daytime reading in addition to the nighttime reading.
You may know that our historic minhag (custom) was for women to read megillah only at night, as some opinions hold that the day-reading has different halachic requirements. This year, in light of the challenging circumstances around COVID, we have made a number of changes to our services each week, and for Purim, will also plan to have women reading from the megillah for the daytime reading as well. This allows us to take full advantage of ALL potential readers. To be clear, this approach is fully consistent with the requirements of the halacha. We will revisit the issue next year and decide whether to continue this practice moving forward.
I invite everyone to join me for a class on February 18th at 8:30 pm to further discuss the sources and the halachot and minhagim that relate to this topic.
