PUIRM: TRANSFORMING "SLEEP" INTO "CHANGE"

It is interesting that the Hebrew words "שנה" ("a year") and "שנה" ("sleep") are spelled exactly the same way, with only the vowel points being different. There is something in the predictability of time, with spring and summer always coming after winter and never vice versa, that lulls us into sleep.

Then comes Rabbeinu and says that the year starts with Purim, when "Megillah Esther" jolts us out of our slumber. The Megillah is one of those "stories from ancient times" that wake people from spiritual sleep, as Rabbeinu explains in Torah 60. Each year on Purim we, as Breslover chassidim, are supposed to wake up a little more and become at least a tiny bit better, so that our years are also transformed and become associated not with sleep but with change - שינוי.

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