Memoirs of a Half Bearded Purim - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

shalom fellowship do you know how much i love this fellowship we can't see the photo show i know you can't see me yet okay because i want to give a little introduction all right because i love this fellowship so much that i have kept on my purim costume this whole time since purim so i can share it with you which was not an easy thing to do but i did it so are you ready do you know why it was so difficult to do well here it is that's true yes i shaved off half of my beard it's a true story it's not a special thing and as shocking as this may be for you um it was even more so for shayna right shayna has never seen me without a beard i've had an uninterrupted beard for well over 10 years now and let me tell you it's a little bit vulnerable for me even coming on like this even though it's an intentional intentional mask and it just i got to get jeremy strain out of there i can't look at his face right now but um you know it was it was it was shocking for her it was shocking for trash but it was even more so surprising for me all right so here's the story most purims i wear the same costume it's a long sleeve tie-dye shirt that i bought 20 years ago from my arm which i burned from sun exposure it doesn't matter it's not the most creative costume but it's good enough for me so i woke up on poor morning and i put on my lame costume and i walked into the bathroom and i looked at myself in the mirror and from out of nowhere the thought shot into my mind that's a long beard that's a long beard maybe i should shave it off or even weirder half of it off because i remember a dorm counselor that did that when i was in college but then i thought no way i can't do that i can't do that there are people out there that look at me as their rabbi and i have this rabbi beard that i also really like i can't i can't take this beard off what would people think of me what would the fellowship think of me and then i thought uh oh what will people think of me oh no this beard is gonna have to come off now because it's become its own sort of mask it's true i do connect with the idea of having a beard and this will probably be the last time in my life that i ever don't have one um but at that moment i knew in my heart that it needed to come off even if i didn't fully know why or not that it needed to come off but if it didn't if i didn't take out and take it off i would lose a valuable opportunity to grow in whatever way that taking it off would allow me to grow you know i was trying to have a a lev shomea you know a listening heart that king solomon prayed for when he was a boy and became king and part of that means to be able to bypass and circumvent the intellect just for a moment and just listen to what my heart is telling me and the thought in my mind was that you know on poor and part of the reason we put on masks is to remember that we wear masks all the time that to some degree this world is a mask and perhaps my mask this porn will be to take off my mask laying it all bare and my brain was screaming no this is a bad idea think this over but i knew two things one thing was that for that moment and maybe for only for that moment shaving off my beard was a true spiritual endeavor i just know that feeling by now and it's something i can't explain i felt like it would be a real spiritual service of hashem that would ultimately bring me closer to closer to him even if i didn't fully understand how or why and the other thing i recognized was that if i didn't do it right then i wouldn't do it at all there were just too many different compelling reasons not to do it and i also had enough confidence in my relationship with shayna that i knew that if i told her that that i did this because this is where my heart led me that it wasn't just a crazy silliness but a true service of the heart that she would support me in that which was super important so i found my shaver and after years of neglect it really it worked which was like a sign and i shaved off half of my beard then i thought okay well let's see who thinks i'm their rabbi now so i walked up to the other room and when shayna saw me she was speechless and she was just it was like she was like dumbfounded and confused and disoriented and then she just burst out laughing followed by vash who burst out laughing maybe she didn't know what the heck was going on but she looked at me like who is this guy anyways that was pretty much the response i got throughout the day people were incredulous that i could do such a thing for a costume and i tried to explain to them that i really didn't just do it for a costume i wanted to lay myself bare and just for a moment to take off my beard and remember that i'm just re i'm a guy with with cheeks and a few freckles and uh and that i can never fall into the trap of taking myself too seriously that i did it because the moment called for it so some people understood uh some people like jeremy weren't exactly in the head place to understand but i think he he respected it for what it was anyways one person my friend ryan's wife she came she asked me if i was dressed as both heyman and mordechai right and she said it wasn't that my bare face looks like hey man she just said that my bearded face looks like she imagined mordechai's face to look which left my bare face to be the contrast to that to look like haman anyways i looked in the mirror and i found myself deeply reflecting on that the one side of my face was haman and the other side was mordecai and that perhaps led to one of the most meaningful moments of the entire holiday because as i looked at my reflection i realized that really is what purim is about to the deepest level does you remember what we learned in bray sheet in genesis i remember we learned this together that we all have both esau and jacob within us well even more so than that we all have mordechai and haman within us too and the real battle isn't just about fighting the external haman's of this world the external amaleks of this world the real battle is about defeating the haman within us right defeating that dark voice that ambushes us right with like these whispers that no it's a coincidence and things are random and by chance that haman in in our ear and in our hearts that's what the real war is about right because the gematria remember the numerical value last three weeks in a row we've talked about it the gamatri of amalek is 240 which is the same number as safe which means doubt meaning that the real world the real the real war that we have in defeating amalek the real war to vanquish haman is within our own hearts our success first and foremost in that arena determines our success in the external battles in the physical world and so looking my face on form helped me internalize the truth that the real battle really happens here right in our own hearts in defeating the haman within ourselves to to purge ourselves of that doubt and to fill our hearts with faith now a normal person would have shaved the other side of their face the moment the purim ended and just start growing the beard again right it's not that weird just have a guy without a beard look at jeremy he doesn't have such a beard but after all that you know i was thinking actually about king david's men in the second book of samuel chapter 10 how many of you thought of that when the evil ammonite king shaved off half of their beards to embarrass them what did they do they went home and they waited till it grew back that's maybe what i should have done but not me i wanted to share with all of you which meant keeping it on over shabbat so i ended up going to modi in one of the the biggest cities in israel to spend shabbat with my sister now my sister looked at me and she looked at both sides of my face independently she said cover up the beard side she looked and she's like just looked at my beardless face and she goes you know beardless is not a good look for you it's just not a nice look you should really keep the beard to which i responded so you're just saying my bare face is not a good look my face is not a good look i should go with the beard who wouldn't want to hear that but anyway siblings can say all sorts of things and so then it came time to go to synagogue and of course the first voice in my head was that i should pray at home the shabbat maybe it's best not to go to the one of the more prominent synagogues in the area and just sit this one out but then i thought nope that's the whole point if i go to synagogue now after purim i can really get my money's worth with this whole beard thing i could really get the spiritual bang for my buck it's a little bit like the self-deprecating equivalent of jeremy's cold plunge right that's what it felt like like okay i'm just gonna do this go to get it slow and i forced myself to do it and when i arrived i started feeling that burn that ego burn i was definitely getting looks not only from strangers but i knew many people there well they think that i'm crazy well they stopped respecting me i felt that that ego burn and there was really something cleansing about it i found myself thinking about the famed novartic yeshiva you remember the yeshiva navardic jeremy you learned about that in the 1800s where the students were known to do particularly humiliating self-deprecating things like going into a bakery and asking to buy a hammer or a screwdriver or dressing and torn rags or stuff like that they did this in order to ensure that they didn't care too much about what other people think and the words kept going through my head right it's better to be a fool in the eyes of man for your entire life than in the eyes of god for even a moment but then i would look in the mirror and say you know i actually probably look like a full in the eyes of god too but that's neither here nor there but anyways i arrived in synagogue i took my seat in the back and within a few minutes someone approached me and brought me a mask and while i originally thought this was a unique suggestion for me personally in my condition it turns out that this is one of the few synagogues that still request that you wear a mask during services so i put on the mask and truth be told it was the happiest i felt putting on a mask since the pandemic began anyways i'm not going to keep going on and on it wasn't all that bad it was close enough to form that i'm sure people made this suggestion and figured out that maybe i didn't have time to even out things before shabbat also gave me an opportunity to make people smile make people laugh which i enjoyed to do it gave me the opportunity to flex that muscle of not caring around what people think and it allowed me to remember that i can never start to take myself too seriously right that the ego unchecked is as much of a spiritual liability as as anything else and you know i've told you before this i've been doing this since i'm a kid where my father told me this is what it means to be a jew you can never care what anyone else thinks yes jeremy over the years i would switch between various kippahs the different demographics were there's a felt black one that the ultra orthodox wear or nitkepa that's a religious zionists wear or even a kafiya i would just keep switching around which most people don't do usually settle into a box and uh but i didn't want to ever get so connected to a specific identity that it became calcified in my external trappings which then can come to define me and box me in internally as well right which is even more tragic but the older i get the less frequent these exercises really became and the less important they seem to be because i started feeling like i know who i am inside and the external stuff seemed to be less relevant which is why i am not suggesting that anyone else do this or anything like this i'm not even 100 sure it was the right thing for me to do but ultimately i did it because at that moment on purim staring into the mirror i really felt that in my heart for me i had the opportunity for authentic growth which was unique to purim right an opportunity to take off a mask and remember that the real battle of this world is not on the on the outside that it's on the inside and so my friends i want to bless us all that we're able to to really sometimes take off our masks when we need to that we're able to internalize the truth that everything that happens in our lives and in the entire world is is orchestrated by the ultimate king of the world and and as we approach pesach right that's what's coming up as we approach passover may we be prepared to see that just as hashem runs the world through nature right from behind the mask the great day will come when all the masks are removed which will usher in the the ultimate redemption before the eyes of the entire world the greater redemption and revelation that we could ever imagine so i love you both i love all of you love you jeremy love you all in this fellowship shane is very excited that now i get to go upstairs and take off the rest of my beard and start the healing process of regrowth well i thought i dared you to keep it until passover you said you were gonna accept the dare i actually said that to shayna and she was like please no don't i'm not gonna do that that's just off the bat too crazy but i'm really proud of you that you kept it all the way through sunday so our fellowship could see what you looked like on all for us on purim excellent good for you thank you ari