Let's take a deep and thoughtful look at one of the Jewish calendar's most joyful holidays and ask some surprisingly serious questions: Why do we celebrate Jewish holidays at all? What is Purim actually trying to teach us — and how is its lesson unlike any other in the Torah?

We explore the unique place Megillat Esther holds in Jewish literature, and what it means that God's name never appears in it — not once. Unlike the five books of Moses, the Purim story doesn't announce the divine. It hides it. And maybe that's exactly the point.

We also sit with a harder truth: that today, many of us are holding onto a rope of faith — but that rope is shaking, and shaking violently. In a world where belief feels uncertain, are there ways beyond crisis and foxholes to find our way back to meaning? And what can the story of Esther, Mordecai, and a near-annihilation of the Jewish people teach us about that search?