Ad d’Lo Yada (“until we can no longer discriminate”), a prayer for Purim 2026 by Rabbi Hannah Dresner

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1 March 2026 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

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Social Justice, Peace, and Liberty, Purim

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2026 U.S. immigration enforcement protests, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, first person, Immigration policy of Donald Trump, Minneapolis, United States Immigration Policy

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	Holy One of blessing, you are the great differentiator, hamavdil bein or l’ḥoshekh, distinguishing between light and dark, holy and profane. Yet tonight, as we read the story of Esther and Haman, Mordekhai and Aḥashverosh, you ask us to make a mitsvah of altering our states of consciousness, ad d’lo yada (Megillah 7b.7) – until we can no longer discriminate between hero and villain, between “Blessed be Mordekhai” and “Cursed be Haman.”
	This is the powerful irony and the surprising lesson at the heart of our celebration. You demand we turn the narrative on its head, mandating a confusion of relative righteousness, declaring that wise one and fool, hero and villain are interchangeable, bidding us to see even those whom we fear as brethren so that we might stand face to face with the pure soul of our foe and bless him.
	But must we adhere to that mitsvah THIS year? In the face of rampant White supremacy? I’m afraid I cannot.
	All I can think is that you ask us to focus on blessing, not anger and curses. All I can think is that you require us to be vigilant in training our hearts to love. All I can think is that abandoning the mitsvah of offering equal blessing to Haman would relinquish ground to the evil around us.
	꙳
	Please, hover near, dear Shekhinah. Imbue us with your loving kindness. Bless us with the strength to cultivate undifferentiated love, impossible as that feels when our neighbors are under siege, their children afraid of returning from school to desecrated homes and disappeared parents.
	On Minneapolis streets protestors have been singing to ICE: “Put down your weapons and sing your part. We walk the same ground, but we’re torn apart…” May we not forget there is something greater than judgment. And may our practice of radical love, here below, arouse a great flow of healing in the heavens.
	Amen.

“Ad d’Lo Yada” was offered by R’ Hannah Dresner and first published in In Times Like These (2026), a collection of prayers and related resources for Purim published by The Bayit: Building Jewish.

Hannah Dresner

Hannah Dresner is a rabbi in the Jewish Renewal movement in Canada. Until 2024, she served as the spiritual leader of Or Shalom (Vancouver, British Columbia). She is in the last cohort to have received rabbinic smikhah from Rabbi Zalman Shachter-Shalomi through the ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal, where she was also ordained as a spiritual director. Rabbi Hannah entered the rabbinate with an MFA from the University of Chicago and an exhibition, curatorial, and teaching record in visual arts. She is a Rabbis Without Borders fellow as well as a fellow in the second cohort of CLI, CLAL’s Clergy Leadership Incubator.

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו׃ (תהלים צ:יז) · "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." (Psalms 90:17)

Ad d’Lo Yada (“until we can no longer discriminate”), a prayer for Purim 2026 by Rabbi Hannah Dresner

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