By Betzy Lynch in La Jolla, California
I struggle with the linear concept of time. In truth, I’m not sure I believe in it. I live within it, of course, trying each day to function inside its artificial boundaries. As a result, I am too often late, not because I intend to be, but because I am trying so hard not to be.
For years, I stopped wearing a watch. I became so obsessed with tracking time, so afraid of appearing disrespectful, that I realized I could not be present. Without a watch, I could finally focus on where I was instead of worrying about what was next.
Years, months, hours, minutes, they constantly remind us that what just happened is over, that the past is gone. But if that is true, why does history feel like it repeats itself?
I woke up this morning feeling more like it was Groundhog Day than nearly Purim. My phone rang out with red alert sirens announcing missiles sent across Israel and the region from Iran. It felt painfully familiar, as if the past were not past at all, but alive in our present.
The dread felt familiar too. But instead of staying there, I leaned into my instinct to question time itself. What if Jewish tradition understands time differently?
Many Jewish sages rejected both a purely linear view of time and a simple cyclical one. My search led me to Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague. Living in the 16th century amid upheaval and instability for European Jewry, the Maharal sought to explain Jewish destiny not through supernatural spectacle, but through spiritual structure.
For the Maharal, time is neither a straight line nor a circle. It is a spiral. Sacred events create permanent spiritual forms in the world. When the calendar brings us back to those moments, we revisit the same spiritual point but, we are not the same people. History both returns and advances.
He develops this idea most powerfully in his commentary on the Book of Esther, Ohr Chadash (New Light). The Maharal teaches that Purim introduced a new kind of spiritual light into the world.
Unlike Passover, with its splitting sea, or Shavuot, with thunder at Sinai, Purim contains no overt miracles. It unfolds in exile, outside the Land of Israel. The story feels political and coincidental: a beauty contest, a sleepless king, palace intrigue, fortunate or unfortunate timing. G-d’s name is never even mentioned.
And yet everything turns at precisely the right moment.
In ancient Persia, Haman plots to annihilate the Jewish people. The date is set by casting lots, purim. Esther, urged by Mordechai, risks her life to reveal her identity and expose the plot. The decree is reversed. Haman is executed. A day meant for destruction becomes a day of survival and joy.
For the Maharal, the miracle of Purim is hidden within ordinary events. No laws of nature are suspended. Instead, a concealed order reveals itself over time. This is the “new light”, the discovery that divine structure operates even when G-d seems absent.
And that light was not meant only for ancient Persia. Once revealed, it became embedded in Jewish time. Every year, when Purim returns, that same spiritual light becomes available again.
Purim is not simply remembering survival with costumes and celebration. It is training ourselves to see hidden patterns. It reminds us that concealment is not abandonment, that reversals are possible, and that Jewish survival is not accidental.
The fact that Purim takes place in exile is essential. Earlier in our history, G-d’s presence felt overt. But exile introduces hiddenness. The Jewish people must survive in a world where power belongs to others, where politics feel unstable, where divine intervention is not obvious.
Sound familiar?
Many of us live as minorities in complex societies. We witness instability. We feel vulnerable. We are not waiting for seas to split. And yet Jewish life continues, across continents, across centuries, across threats. That continuity itself reflects a deeper structure.
Purim teaches that exile is not only geographical. It can also be personal, moments when faith feels distant, when meaning feels obscured. The question is not whether miracles will interrupt history, but whether we can learn to see the sacred within it.
Each year when we read the Megillah, we are not simply recalling the past. We are encountering that spiritual light again. But we are different than we were last year. The world is different. The Jewish situation is different. When the story returns, it meets a new historical moment.
That is the spiral.
It is not a downward spiral of repetition, but an upward one. We pass the same spiritual point, yet from a higher vantage point. The danger may still exist. The uncertainty may still exist. But so does the light.
The joy of Purim does not erase fear. It reframes it. It reminds us that hiddenness can contain meaning, that reversals can unfold slowly, and that what appears coincidental may, in time, reveal coherence.
As Shabbat fades and we prepare to embrace Purim, we pray for peace and safety in Israel and throughout the world. May this turn of the Jewish spiral of time bring forward the hidden light first revealed in Persia and may it carry us and the people of Iran, steadily and faithfully, toward redemption.
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Betzy Lynch is Chief Executive Officer of the Lawrence Family JCC.