Well, we've entered the month of Adar and now we have to explore this strange imperative: 'When Adar begins, increase joy'. We looked at a number of sources that speak about the relationship of external acts and the concept of joy, and eventually at the relationship between inspiration and creativity in the psalms of David.
(sorry it's a longer summary than usual!)
You can see all the texts in the sourcesheet here. We didn't delve too deep into Rambam's dramatic misquotation of the Talmud, where he leaves out happiness as a prerequisite to prayer, and we didn't get too far in Rebbe Nachman's analogy of joy pulling sadness onto the dancefloor, but that just means there's more to learn another day.
Happy Adar, whatever that means.
Josh