Purim 2020. My family had just made aliyah a few months earlier. We were finally in Israel, ready to celebrate our first Purim in the homeland. The costumes were bought. The mishloach manot were packed. The kids were buzzing.

Then COVID shut everything down.

Megillah reading on Zoom. Abbreviated prayers. No gatherings. No school parties. No parades through the streets. The rabbis told us to stay home. The government told us to stay home. We read the story of Jewish survival from our couches, masked and isolated, celebrating deliverance while locked in our houses.

We told ourselves: next year. Next year will be different. Next year we will celebrate the way Purim is meant to be celebrated in Israel.

And eventually, we did. Purim came back. The streets filled with costumes again. The kids went to school dressed as superheroes and queens and IDF soldiers. Mishloach manot overflowed on every doorstep. The music was loud. The joy was real. We had made it through.

Then came October 7, 2023.

That Purim, just months later, was gutted. The country was in mourning. Soldiers were deployed across every front. Fathers were gone. Families were shattered. Communities that had been evacuated from the north and south were living in hotels, trying to explain to their children why Purim felt so hollow this year. We dressed up because the kids needed us to. We read the megillah because we always do. But the laughter was........

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