Well, another year, another Shushan Purim.

Even before ‘WAR WITH IRAN’, we decided to make an effort this year to really ‘do’ Purim properly.

I got some crepe paper and turned the living room into a kinda Persian palace. I got some material, and made some kinda ‘Bigsan and Teresh’ costumes. My husband found some hats, to complete the look.

I bought the brisket, made the desserts – mostly, all before ‘WAR WITH IRAN’.

That just left the mishloach manot.

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If you’ve been with me for a while, you probably already know that the thing I hate most about Purim, is the mishloach manot.

In previous years, we wasted a lot of time, money and energy trying to deliver ‘themed’ mishloach manot to 5,000 people we didn’t really like or have anything much in common with.

Baruch Hashem, we stopped doing that a long time ago.

About 10 years ago already, I realised that doing two mishloach manot nicely was worth way, way more than 3,000 purim baggies stuffed with a chocolate bar and hamentashen that no-one really eats.

Then about 5 year ago, during Covid, I realised the wisdom in just giving mishloach manot to people I could walk to.

Which basically took me down to giving to my neighbours.

And that’s what I’ve been doing, ever since.

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This year, though, the mishloach manot were giving me a bit of trouble.

First, because the super-expensive three items I got from the health food store looked totally nisht and gornisht, stuck in the middle of the huge wicker basket I’d picked up a month back from Max Stock.

Why, o why did I get such a big wicker basket?! I started beating myself up about it.

I’ve already spent a small fortune on my three ‘quality’ items, to fill this up is going to cost me a ton more.

And for who, exactly?

Because this year, I had no idea where these two mishloach manot were even going.

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After having a whole ‘beat myself up party’ for half an hour, which ran along the lines of why couldn’t you just do like everyone else, and send cheap chocolate bars and big, space-filling bags of bamba?! – I had an epiphany.

First, I padded the bottom with some cut-up napkins.

Then, I went to the cupboard and pulled out – what else? – two bags of bamba, and two boxes of craisins.

The wicker basket now looked presentable, and I didn’t have to spend another 200 shekels to get it that way.

For the first time, I realised I was taking a more ‘balanced’ approach to the mishloach manot, not totally ‘over there’ in cheap, ready-made mode, and not totally ‘over here’ in poncey hand-crafted artisanal items, either.

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But I still had the next challenge: who to give it to.

I live in an old, small building.

The elderly neighbours on the top floor moved out, because they couldn’t cope with the running up and down the stairs stuff to the bomb shelter in the middle of the night.

Next floor down, one apartment is doing shiputz, and they haven’t moved back in yet.

Next floor down, I was planning to give to the neighbours across the hall – but they seemed to have ‘skipped out’ on Shushan Purim, and gone somewhere else to get away from it.

The neighbour downstairs also seemed to have got fed up with running up the outdoor stairs, in the middle of the night, with their two young kids, to get to the bomb shelter, so they also weren’t home.

Hmm.

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I delivered one to the American guy upstairs who I never spoke to before.

He asked me how come you don’t come to the bomb shelter, we never see you?

I told him, I stay home and say tehillim instead.

– You could do both together, in the bomb shelter.

How to explain, that my worldview and his worldview on these things are very different?

How to get out of this conversation without throwing in the ‘grenade’ that being in the bomb shelter in Bet Shemesh didn’t exactly help all the poor people who were killed there?

I’m lazy… I told him. I’d rather stay in my bed.

–My son is in pikud oref, he told me. He’d be very angry that you’re not going to the bomb shelter.

Well, I guess it’s a good thing your son doesn’t live in the building, then…

I smiled, waved, backed away.

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Later on, that neighbour put a children’s book under my door as a present, as a ‘thank you’ for noticing him, I guess.

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But I still had one mishloach manot to deliver.

I went to the nice woman I see twice a year in shul, when our paths cross. She wasn’t home.

I tried another neighbour. She wasn’t home.

Then, I decided to take it over to my old downstairs neighbour in the place we left last year.

I heard she’d gone back for her annual there month visit to the US, but she usually made sure to be back for Purim and Pesach.

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I walked through the sad, half-over-grown garden that used to be my pride and joy.

The place looked deserted.

I knocked on the door anyway – no-one there.

That’s when I noticed a weird ‘kamaya’ stuck to the front door, presumably by my secular-but-superstitious landlords, with a whole bunch of hebrew writing, kabbalistic patterns and weird formulae, one of which was in the shape of a bird’s body, and that had an eagle’s head drawn above it.

‘Kamaya for Protection in Jerusalem’, it said.

The thing totally gave me the creeps.

And it kind of reinforced just how the kabbalah can be abused and misused, by people casting ‘kabbalistic spells’ to try to keep their expensive property safe, instead of making the real teshuva required to return to God, and pray to Him for help, instead.

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So, my mishloach manot mission was a bust.

And I had to get back and get on with doing the seuda.

My kids live out of Jerusalem, but they both wanted to come to us for Shushan Purim after they did their own thing.

One SIL was hung over, one was preoccupied trying to arrange a new work project.

Both grandsons were snotty.

One daughter was throwing up…

Everyone was coughing.

My husband also had a work thing that he was preoccupied with.

We had 4, or 4 sirens, punctuating the afternoon.

But despite all this, I actually enjoyed myself more than usual.

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Why?

Because I let everything go.

I did my bit, to fulfill all the Purim mitzvot.

The siren at 5.55am woke me up early enough to do an hour of hitbodedut before the megillah reading.

I fit in three TKs when most of my guests disappeared off down to the bomb shelter (where that same neighbour complained about them bringing a ‘sick baby’ into an enclosed space. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.)

Shortly after the meal, a ton of my daughters’ friends descended on the house, as has become a tradition from when she lived with us.

It was kinda mad.

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As I busied myself cleaning up, I realised how we make our own reality, mamash.

We either take the lemons and make lemonade, or we get so sour and bitter that life takes on that flavour in all directions.

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In the end, the mishloach manot found a home.

I’d forgotten to give one to my in-laws this year, with all the balagan.

My carefully-prepared, shavei wicker basket found the perfect home, when my daughter delivered on the way back to her yishuv.

Hashem had the whole day planned, to perfection.

Now, the trick is to keep remembering that as we head into Pesach.