Over President’s Day weekend, I went to visit my daughter Naomi, who is a student at Boston University. She had no classes over the long weekend, and we were excited for the mother-daughter time. Part of the fun was to be the sleepover at the hotel; Naomi is a light sleeper and her (otherwise wonderful and very lovely) roommate is an early bird with a heavy tread. We went to dinner Sunday night, watched some “Sopranos,” and turned out the lights relishing the luxury of sleeping in on a Monday morning.

We were dead asleep at 3 a.m. when the emergency system sounded. Louder than loud, strobe lights and all. We jumped at least a mile, even though the ceiling wasn’t that high. The voice on the loudspeaker instructed us to evacuate. Wide awake, we pulled on our coats and boots (this was that single-digits week, remember?) and trudged down the six flights of stairs to the lobby. Joined the zombie parade, feeling grateful we weren’t part of the business convention. Clearly there were colleagues who were not happy to be seen in pajamas and hairpins at 3 am.

Twenty minutes later, we got the all-clear and headed back up to the room. Naomi fell asleep first, somewhere around four. I must have finally dozed off too… because at 5 am, the alarms went off again. This time the voice on the loudspeaker said to stay in place. Lying in bed trying to relax proved futile as the fire warden provided the required updates every few minutes: the fire department has been notified. The fire department is on their way. The fire department has arrived… by 5:30, the all-clear.

Took a while, but we fell back asleep. Until… you guessed it, the alarm system triggered again. Two more times, actually, until we finally gave up and started the day.

So much for a restorative, full night of sleep.

It wasn’t yet Adar then, but it is now, and that story feels top of mind. Because this month of Adar is the month on the Jewish calendar where we say: let go of your expectations. Whatever happens, find the humor in it. Purim (the word) means “lots,” as in “casting lots.” On Yom Kippur we focus on fairness, justice, getting what we deserve, doing what we need to do to clean up our act… but on Purim? We throw it to the dogs. To the wolves and hyenas and goldfish and whomever else we might toss our expectations. Because you know what? Sometimes life just doesn’t happen as planned, makes no sense, doesn’t feel fair, and you can’t see which way is right or wrong or make sense of anything anyway.

Hmm, that sounds about right for this cultural-political moment we are living through right now, doesn’t it?

All those emergency alarm signals going off every other minute in our heads, feeds, news channels: they might mean something. We should probably take them all really seriously. And also, maybe not. Sometimes, those alarms are just… accidental, funny, part of a story that reminds us that life doesn’t go as planned or as you wanted and you know what? It’s okay. It’s Purim. Laugh. Don’t take it all so seriously. Yom Kippur will come around again all too soon. Plenty of time to be serious. 

Tradition holds that we are to get so drunk on Purim that as we read the Megillah (7:30 pm this Thursday night) we can’t tell the bad guy (Haman, boo!) from the good guy (Mordechai, yay!). Sometimes it’s Yom-Kippur-obvious who has sinned and who has transgressed… and sometimes it’s Purim free-for-all, unclear which is which, and anyway, aren’t most of us some of both, bad guy and good guy, isn’t it all mixed up and crazy? That’s part of the story, too.

On Thursday night, we will gather to play and be silly. We will shout and boo as we read sacred, holy texts. We will read the one book of the Bible that doesn’t mention God even once (Esther). We will don costumes and set aside the worry and stress. 

We get there via Shabbat Zachor, this Saturday, where we fulfill the mitzvah of remembering Amalek, one of the Torah’s original arch-villains. We are commanded to remember how he attacked us when we were weak and tired. Pretty apt in an October 8 world. Pretty serious stuff. And then once we’ve remembered… we get silly, we get drunk, we get irreverent. I have to say, pretty cool for a religion to include a holiday that features making merry of its own sense of God-absent historical events, of the stuff that makes zero sense… and pretty cool that holding both, the serious and the silly, is part of the magic of Jewish survival from Amalek’s days, 3,000+ years ago through today.

The emergency alarms are sounding all around us. But sometimes, they can make us laugh. Sometimes, they are waking us up to how funny (odd, unexpected, weird) life can be. Sometimes, they are telling us to wake up with a sense of humor, even in the middle of a cold winter night.