Over the past few days, several members have been asking exactly what’s going on this year, with Purim spread over three days. To clarify the issue, the position is like this:
If you live in any city that was
walled at the time of Joshua (this traditionally includes Jerusalem), Purim is
normally celebrated on 15 Adar, a day after it is celebrated everywhere else.
This late Purim is called Shushan Purim.
Regular Purim can never fall on a Shabbat, but Shushan Purim can. This is a bit of a problem since we can’t read the Megillah on a Shabbat. The Gemara advances several reasons for this, one being that we might have a problem reading it so we carry it more than four amot through a public throughfare when seeking the assistance of a chacham.
How do we spread the mitzvot of Purim
across our three-day festival? The Shulchan Aruch [Orach Chayim 688:6] explains
that we read the Megillah on the Thursday night and Friday morning. Then, on
Shabbat, we lein the parsha of Amalek out of a second sefer and recite Al
HaNissim. On the following day, Sunday, we have our Purim seudah and give
mishloach manot.
On Tuesday and Thursday evening of this week, between Mincha and Maariv,
Rabbi Kenigsberg spoke in Shul on this very topic. These instructive shiurim can be accessed on our YouTube channel here and here respectively.
There’s more to come: This coming Sunday, in place of the regular Tzurba shiur, Rabbi Kenigsberg will be devoting an entire hour to this topic, starting at 10 am in Shul and on Zoom.
