I was at a bris just this week and everyone but me and another lady was Persian.

Everyone was speaking in Persian. Everyone looked and dressed Persian.

What does it mean they looked and dressed Persian?

There’s a style a way. A way they sit. A way they eat. They don’t eat the greasy stuff but stick to the salads. They are not loud but elegant. Regal and graceful. Quietly strong.

One woman’s baby sits next to me in a carriage and doesn’t make a peep for a full hour. It is a world of wives and mothers and women waiting to be wives and mothers.

And all I keep thinking is — this is the perfect place to be the week of Purim. Get the whole flavor.

Since everyone is speaking in Persian I have lots of time and so I start to think how Esther must have looked. How she must have carried herself.

How did she walk to the palace that first day? What did she tell herself on the way? Mordechai couldn’t bring her she was alone. A young girl with such a heavy mission to carry out.

I think about how there’s a piece of Esther in all these ladies sitting at the table.

Meanwhile the men are davening on the other side of the mechitzah in melodies old and ancient. If I close my eyes I could be in Shushan or Tehran.

The women get up to look through the lattice openings in the mechitzah.

The baby’s wrapped in a blanket waiting.

I think about what an unusual people we are Am Yisrael.

If anyone would peer into this scene they’d wonder What is this people? Aren’t they supposed to be people of kindness of justice of truth? So what are they doing all crowded around this helpless little baby?

 I tell my daughter at this point not to talk and to daven to Hashem for anything she wants because the cries of the baby open up the Heavens and all the prayers pass through. And she gets it not questioning that this is our way.

The baby cries and so do the Persian mothers and grandmothers. Their tears are ancient royal and graceful. The more the baby cries the higher the prayers fly.

Later on the phone with an old and very wise friend we talk about this idea of pain and prayer and why it is this way.

She quotes: “By your blood you shall live by your blood you shall live” and adds “pain is our life force.”

Sounds like something out of a scary sci-fi novel.

She explains further brings it down to earth. She says “I never really understood this pain business and I kind of cringed about it at that time. It really doesn’t fit the ‘American fun’ doctrine.”

The Persian women sit back down at their tables. They talk a little.

One says how another woman’s mother is such a tzadeikes. She adds “It’s all in her merit.” They all agree. “I know more than you that this is true because I live with her everyday” the woman’s daughter says “I see it with my own eyes.”

A photographer comes to take some pictures with a small video phone camera. The aunt of the baby gets up to talk for everyone. At first she’s shy but the will to bless overrides it. “He should come to good deeds” she blesses for the camera.

The other day I heard a small vort from Rabbi David Goldstein about how “Gratitude to HaKadosh Baruch Hu is our life’s blood” and that “Purim is about hakaras hatov. Being thankful even when everything doesn’t look so good.”

He stresses “It only doesn’t look good to us!”

Before the Steipler Rav left this world he wrote a letter to his wife. It read “The things you laugh about today you will cry about tomorrow. And the things you cry about today you will laugh about tomorrow.”

I believe this is what the gantze Megillah is about. Understanding this was Esther’s strength.