From time to time, as a relative newcomer to Manchester, I’ll find people giving me directions like this, “Head down Elm Street till you get to where Leavitt’s used to be and then take a left and you can’t miss it!”  I ignore the worthless information, take down the address, plug it into my computer, and thank them for their trouble.  This nostalgic manner of navigation is not unique by any means to New England; people used it all the time when I was living in the South, in Charleston, SC, as well.  People would guide you by the landmarks of yesteryear as if you could still sense these historic places lurking behind the facades of the banks and fast food joints which had replaced them years ago.

          I thought of this phenomenon as I looked at the Jewish calendar for this week.  Wednesday and Thursday are designated as “Purim Katan,” literally “the Little Feast of Lots, the Little Purim,” days when certain penitential prayers are omitted from our daily service simply because we would have been celebrating a holiday this week if only the lunar calendar had not been “intercalated” this year.  By intercalation, I’m referring to the fact that the Jewish calendar is adjusted periodically (every two or three years) to put our holidays back in synch with the seasons.  To accomplish this, we have added a thirteenth month to the Hebrew calendar this year.  Consequently all of the Jewish holidays will be 19 days later than last year rather than 11 days earlier as is usually the case because the lunar year has only 354 days, not 365. 

          The Roman Catholic Church as well as most Protestant churches, which normally celebrate Easter during the week of Passover, do not follow us in this adjustment, so Easter is “early” and Passover is “late” this year.  Our Festival of Freedom comes four full weeks after Easter Sunday unless you're a member of the Orthodox Church.  This year instead, Easter comes right after Purim, the Feast of Lots, a joyous biblical holiday celebrating the victory of Mordecai and Esther in ancient Persia, foiling the plot of the wicked Haman, the villain of the Book of Esther.  By drawing lots, Haman chose the 13th day of the Hebrew month of Adar as the date to destroy all the Jews.  Instead, God quietly intervened on our behalf and there was a great victory by the Jews over their enemies on that day and Haman and his 10 sons were hanged.  Since the days of Queen Esther, we celebrate the victory on the next day, the 14th of Adar, or in cities like Jerusalem, which had a wall back in the days of Joshua (a whole other story), the feast comes on the 15th of Adar. 

          The 14th of Adar, the holiday of Purim, happens to fall on Good Friday this year, four weeks from now, as the calendar unfolds.  Thus this week instead, almost like an amputee sensing his phantom limb, we mark when Purim would have been, if only we had left the calendar alone.  Muslims, who also use a lunar calendar, don’t make these kinds of radical adjustments to their schedule and thus their holidays simply circle around the year, moving earlier and earlier, year by year, as their religious calendar continues to lose 11 days with respect to the solar calendar with each annual cycle.  Many of the Jewish holidays, however, were originally agricultural festivals and thus do not make sense if we allow them to slip out of their proper season.  Passover is a spring festival and must come near the wheat harvest so we can make matzah.  Sukkot has to come in the fall after the ingathering of the harvest because it is the Feast of Ingathering.  To avoid dislocation of these holidays, seven times in a nineteen year cycle, we simply double the month before Passover, creating two months of Adar: Adar I and Adar II.

          For most purposes, Adar II serves as the “main” month of Adar during the leap year.  Not only is Purim celebrated in the second month, but a boy born in Adar in a regular year, celebrates his Bar Mitzvah in Adar II, if his thirteenth year happens to be a leap year.  Only children born in Adar I in a leap year get to celebrate in the first Adar.  Conversely, in a regular year, we celebrate bar mitzvahs for children born both in Adar I and Adar II in the regular month of Adar.  Thus it is possible for a child born, say, on the 5th of Adar II to have his bar mitzvah ten days earlier than a child born twenty days before him, on the 15th of Adar I, when their thirteenth birthdays come in a regular year and the two months collapse into one.

          Purim is celebrated in the second Adar because the rabbis of old wanted to link the redemption of that time with the great redemption of Passover in the next month, Nisan.  They note that Haman was executed on the second day of Passover, thus the two holidays are linked together.  Another connection that is made is the tradition that Moses died in Adar.  When Haman drew lots and came up with Adar, he decided he would be victorious over the Jews since this was the month in which Israel’s redeemer, Moses, had died.  Little did he know that it also was on the same date, Adar 7, that Moses was born and with him was born the redemption of the Jews.             

         We are instructed to increase our joy once Adar begins and, some would say, in a year of two Adars, we should double our joy.  Though our celebration of Purim is deferred one month this year, nonetheless the dates where Purim would have been are still days of joy and celebration.  We begin already to anticipate the spring festivals which will follow in only a few more weeks.  On Purim Katan, these two days which mark where the holiday used to be, these “Phantom Holidays” so to speak, we show our joy by omitting the Tachanun prayers of supplication, by not fasting or giving offiicial eulogies when there is a funeral, and by enjoying ourselves “just a tad” with a bit more food and drink than we might have ordinarily had on a regular day.  Be happy, it’s Adar!  Celebrate, it’s Purim Katan!