“Mi’shenichnas Adar, marbim b’simcha." When Adar arrives, we increase in joy. It is a strange instruction, almost defiant. What does it mean to demand joy? To insist upon it—not passively, not as a fleeting emotion, but as something we must stretch and expand within ourselves?
Perhaps this would be an easier mitzvah in a different time, in a different world. But this week, standing at the edge of Adar, joy feels almost impossible. This week, we buried the dream of the Bibas family returning home. This week, we tried to comprehend the unfathomable: a mother who held her children as tightly as she could, and still, it was not enough. This week, we carried their names and whispered their return, only to be left with silence.
And yet, Adar demands of us: “Marbim b’simcha." Increase in joy.
At a Bat Mitzvah in the early days of the war, a friend stood up and spoke about the glass we break under the chuppah. We break it to remember destruction—that even in our highest moments, we do not let go of our history, our grief. But then she said something I have not been able to stop thinking about:
“Maybe now, it is reversed. We stand in brokenness. Everywhere, there is brokenness. Perhaps we need to break a little glass to remind ourselves that even in brokenness, there must be joy—let’s dance.”
And that is the secret of the Jewish people.
We are people who hold joy and grief at the same time. We have danced in the ashes. We have buried our dead and then built new homes, planted new vineyards, written new songs. We have stood at open graves and recited the words Am Yisrael Chai—not as a denial of our sorrow, but as a refusal to let sorrow have the final word.
Last night, my friend’s family was on their way to a Bar Mitzvah. They passed the Karkur Junction moments after a terror attack left thirteen wounded. They passed through the site of violence on their way to a celebration, to a moment of voices rising together, of arms linked in dance, to a declaration that life does not stop. And if that is not the essence of marbim b’simcha, then what is?
Breaking the glass
To be a Jew is to break a glass at a wedding. To cry at a brit milah. To sing Hatikvah in the shadow of memory. To gather the shattered pieces of this world and refuse to believe that they cannot be made whole again.
We do not rejoice because we have forgotten our suffering. We rejoice because we remember.
Because we know that even in the darkest places, joy is not an afterthought—it is a lifeline.
Because we know that the glass breaks, but the wedding goes on.