We are told by our sages that when the month of Adar begins we are to increase joy ( Marbim beSimcha).Yet as we look around us ,the world seems ever  more ominous and  threatening. The latter day Haman of Persia is busy building his nuclear gallows for the Jewish people. Israel ’s classic friends are conditioning and redefining that friendship. Within, great inner turmoil is causing much pain in Zionist religious circles.

The acorn shell that has been the secular Israeli state that had nourished and protected the inner seedlings seems

It is a delicate and dangerous time.

 to be crumbling around us. There is a sense that we are in that delicate phase where the protective shell is crumbling and the seedling has not yet taken full root. It is a delicate and dangerous time. How then do we then enter into a time of increasing joy?  

In reality that question has persisted and has existed for countless generations. Even in the generation of the people of Shushan the question was painfully pertinent. They would have had a difficult time being joyful when the month of Adar began . At that point Haman's decree was hovering over their heads and redemption seemed merely a dream. How could they rejoice from the beginning of the month, when they had not yet experienced the redemption of Purim on the 14th and 15th of Adar. All they saw was the shadow of the large gallows Haman had built.

In our days the beginning of Adar has seen tragedies like the murder of the eight pure souls in Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav and the IDF helicopter disaster. Throughout the generations the question of finding joy in the midst of difficulty has always been pertinent. This is true even more dramatically in our generation.

We are not living in an ordinary generation. We are living in a generation that is witnessing the flowering of redemption. The prophet Jeremiah said;” Behold days are coming... when they shall no longer say, "The living G-d who brought the children of Israel out of Egypt," but "The living G-d who brought... the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all the countries where I had driven them, so that they dwell in their own land." (Yermiyahu 23:7-8) This generation, which has witnessed the Jews returning from the "land of the North" in the former USSR and has seen them being ingathered from every corner of the globe, senses that we are living in special days.  

The Talmud tractate Sanhedrin (98b) describes a conversation between several great sages, thousands of years ago. Three great sages, Rabba, Ulla and Rabbi Yochanan, said: "Let him (Mashiach i.e. the Messiah) come, but I do not want to have to live in that time." The reason for their concern was because those days (which are our days) are special times but they are not easy times. They will be days where darkness and light will be mixed together. They are days when Torah and spiritual living will be tested to the utmost. It will also be a time where much refuse and filth will be thrown at the heads of those that yearn for purity and light.  

Yet Rabbi Yosef felt differently and said, "Let him come, so that I will see him. And furthermore, let me be worthy to sit under the shadow of the dung of his donkey!"  

There is a story of an old, almost ancient, donkey that fell into an unused dried up well. The well was very deep and the donkey could not make its way out of the darkened prison. The donkey began an incessant braying until his owner the farmer came to see what the noise was about. He looked down and saw his donkey and then shook

They [Mashiach's times] are days when Torah and spiritual living will be tested to the utmost.

his head. The well was much too deep and, as it was, the donkey was very old.

He called together some of his friends and they began to shovel refuse into the well. This would serve to end the misery of the donkey, bury it and fill up the dangerous well all at the same time.   The donkey began to bray even louder and then after a period of time, it became silent. After another short while, the farmer looked into the well and was shocked to see the donkey standing defiantly on his four legs. 

It seems that as the trash would land on its back it would shake it off and then use its hooves to pack down the earth below it. Slowly but surely the distance to the top of the well became smaller. Very quickly the donkey was able to hop up and out into freedom.  

The lesson to be learned is not to wallow in self- pity and cry out as more and more weighty tests are being flung on you. Shake the weight of them off your back, stomp it down and continue to reach for higher ground. There you will find joy.