Purim is my favorite holiday. I love the costumes, the hamantaschen, the cheering and the booing. I love the story of Esther. I love the energy and the joy. The attempt to live in the future we dream of right now, even if only for a few hours.

This year's Detroit Jews for Justice Purim party was hard to execute. Discomfort rose as I asked folks to contribute or volunteer or turn up at an art build for the spiel. I understand. Every message I sent in our community channel was sandwiched between calls to protest, to help our immigrant neighbors, to swing into action because there is always always always someone in need.

Why throw a Purim party? Why spend time organizing, planning and directing Purim, when we could use that time to organize mutual aid shifts, ballot petition circulation, or ICE OUT efforts?

Doing hard work together requires a foundation of understanding, trust and relationship, and Purim is one tool we can use to build that foundation. In that way, Purim is mutual aid is ICE out organizing is ballot initiative work. Purim offers an opportunity to embody and experience the just, joyful, liberated future we are working towards. It offers an opportunity to laugh and play, and that laughter and play sustains us during the marathon of our work towards justice.

And so, at our Purim party this year, we danced and caught bubbles. A clown in bright pink and orange flowers made us laugh. We booed the Haman character in our spiel (this year called Staman Miller) and mocked Orangeblobverosh for his greed and violence. We built whistle kits with our partner People’s Assembly so more of our neighbors can lookout for and alert folks to the presence of ICE. We collected signatures for the Invest in MI Kids ballot initiative that will tax the wealthy and raise $1 billion annually for public schools in Michigan.

And, of course, we sang. We sang about how we’re not giving up, we’re here to do the damn thing and we’re here for the long haul. Here is our spiel edition of I Will Survive:

Today I am afraid
I am petrified
Told myself I’d never make a difference in this fight
But I can't ignore the cruelty, it’s my duty: Tikkun Olam
Welcome the stranger, that’s what I was taught, it’s my time to try to be strong

Friends were attacked, while I was unscathed
I can’t pretend it isn't real, hide behind privilege and race
I should've heard you long ago
I should've joined you in the streets
So now I'll try to use my power to help those with less than me

And so I’ll go, and find my voice
Do the work while afraid cause I have no other choice
Learn the power of community, united we can’t fail
We will serve and protect the way pigs never will 

Oh yes I
I will fight
Oh as long as I know how to love, I’ll fight for what is right
I’ve got lots still to learn
And a marathon ahead
But I will fight
I will fight! Hey hey…

Purim allows us to remember that enacting social justice is not just about doing work (in the traditional sense). Or put differently, the work of enacting social justice must include loving, laughing, struggling and grieving. It must include continuing, together, and inviting others into the just, joyful lives we are dreaming and embodying. Purim is one of our perennial opportunities to put these ideals into practice and action.

Our communities and our social justice work cannot be separated. They are wholly intertwined. A more just future requires that we change our lifestyles and ways of being in community. The work of social justice is to build healthy, thriving communities. And the work of a healthy, thriving community is to advance social justice. Our individual survival is bound up with our individual joy, which is bound up with our collective joy, and with our collective survival.

These days, the topsy turvy spirit of Purim always reminds me of Claude Cahun. Cahun was a surrealist artist, resistance activist and openly queer Jew in 1930s Europe. While living under German occupation on the island of Jersey, Cahun and their partner wrote anti-German notes, poems and propaganda and signed some of them "The German With No Name" — as though a soldier dreaming of their more easy, joyous life at home, instead of being deployed to fight a grizzly war. These missives, as well as Cahun's body of artistic work, can be seen as rebellion and invitation: look at what can happen when you allow yourself to dream and embody that dream. Look at how much fun we're having.

Cahun spent their life on the other side of convention, and gently cracked open the door to show the fun and freedom that can be found when we step over and join them.

Like Cahun, we do this work so that all of us can be free to experience joy and love and laughter and community wherever we make it, in the ways we want, while bringing our truest selves. We can't just idolize or dream of that future. We have to EMBODY it. We have to PRACTICE it. Purim is one way we do that. One way that we remind others and ourselves: It’s better over here. We have fun. We live big. Don't you want to join us?