Purim
Family Edition

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Purim is the Jewish carnival of happiness, commemorating the rescue of the Jewish people during the ancient Persian Empire from the evil Haman (a descendant of the Jewish archenemy, Amalek) who tried “to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews, young and old, infants and women, in a single day,” (Esther 3:13). The story is recorded in Megillat Esther. The word “purim” means “lots” in ancient Persian and became the name of the festival because Haman drew lots to determine when he would carry out his plot.

The Story

The Persian Empire of the 4th century BCE extended over 127 lands, and Jews were spread across the Empire. When King Achashverosh had his wife, Queen Vashti, executed for failing to follow his orders, he arranged a beauty pageant to find a new queen. A Jewish girl named Esther found favour in his eyes and became the new queen, but she hid her nationality.

Meanwhile, the Jew-hating Haman was appointed Prime Minister of the Empire. Mordechai, the leader of the Jews, refused to bow to Haman, which was in defiance of the royal decree. Haman was furious, and he persuaded the King to issue a decree ordering the destruction of all the Jews on the 13th of Adar, a date randomly chosen by drawing lots.

Mordechai urged Esther to confront the King and inform him of Haman’s plans. Esther, although reluctant at first for fear of her life, agreed. She asked Mordechai to gather all the Jews in Shushan and convince them to spend three days repenting, fasting, and praying to God. On the third day, Esther invited the King and Haman to join her for a feast. At a second feast, Esther revealed her Jewish identity to the King and accused Haman of attempting to destroy her people. Haman was hanged, Mordechai was appointed Prime Minister in his stead, and a new decree was issued, granting the Jews the right to defend themselves against their enemies.

On the 13th of Adar, the Jews mobilised and killed many of their enemies. On the 14th of Adar, they rested and celebrated. In the capital city of Shushan, they took one more day to finish the job, and so in areas which have been ‘walled cities’ from the time of Joshua (like Shushan), Purim is celebrated on the 15th of Adar instead of the 14th. Today, this only applies to the city of Jerusalem, which celebrates “Shushan Purim” the day after all other Jewish communities.

How We Celebrate Purim

There are four mitzvot on the day of Purim, and they all begin with the letter M (or mem in Hebrew). These are:

• The reading of the Megillah (the Book of Esther), which tells the story of the Purim miracle. We listen to the Megillah-reading once on the night of Purim and then again on the following day.
• Matanot La-Evyonim – giving money gifts to at least two poor people.
• Mishloach Manot – sending gifts of two kinds of ready-to-eat food to at least one person.
• Mishteh – a festive Purim feast, which often includes wine or other intoxicating beverages (Seudat Purim).

There is a general spirit of liveliness and fun on Purim that is unparalleled in the Jewish calendar. It is also customary for children especially (but adults also if they desire) to dress up in costumes. This is because the role of God is hidden in the story of Purim (and in fact even the name of God is starkly missing from the Megillah).

A traditional Purim food is Hamantaschen (three-cornered pastries bursting with sweet fillings such as poppy seeds). “Taschen” means “pockets” in Yiddish and German, but some believe these pastries represent Haman’s favourite three-cornered hat, and in Hebrew we call them “Oznay Haman”, meaning “Haman’s ears”!

On the day before Purim (or on the Thursday before, when Purim is on Sunday), it is customary for those over Bar and Bat Mitzvah age to fast. This commemorates Esther leading the people in fasting and praying to God that He save His people.

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There is a unique law in the approach to Purim. Mishe-nichnas Adar marbim be-simcha: “From the beginning of Adar, we increase in joy.” This is stated in the Talmud (Taanit 29a) and is based on the passage in the Megillah (Esther 9:21-22) in which Mordechai sends a letter throughout the land instructing all Jews “to observe the fourteenth day of the month of Adar and the fifteenth day, every year – the days on which the Jews obtained rest from their enemies and the month which for them was turned from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday.”

This in turn refers back to the text in which Haman decided on the timing of his decree: “In the first month, the month of Nissan, in the twelfth year of Achashverosh, they cast pur (that is, “lots”) before Haman from day to day, and from month to month until the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar” (Esther 3:7).

The difficulties are obvious. Why do we increase our joy for an entire month? The key events were focused on a few days, the thirteenth to the fifteenth, not the whole month. And why is this a time of simcha? We can understand why the Jews of the time felt exhilaration. The decree sentencing them to death had been rescinded. Their enemies had been punished. Haman had been hanged on the very gallows he had prepared for Mordechai, and Mordechai himself had been raised to greatness. But is joy the emotion we should feel in perpetuity, remembering those events? The first warrant for genocide against the Jewish people (the second if one counts Pharaoh’s plan to kill all newborn Jewish males) had been frustrated. Is simcha the appropriate emotion? Surely what we should feel is relief, not joy. Pesach is the proof. The word “joy” is never mentioned in the Torah in connection with it.

Besides which, the Talmud asks why we do not say Hallel on Purim. It gives several answers. The most powerful is that in Hallel we say, “Servants of the Lord, give praise,” – meaning that we are no longer the servants of Pharaoh. But, says the Talmud, even after the deliverance of Purim, Jews were still the servants of Achashverosh, still living in exile, under his rule (Megillah 14a). Tragedy had been averted but there was no real change in the hazards of life in the Diaspora.

It seems to me therefore that the simcha we celebrate throughout the month of Adar is different from the normal joy we feel when something good and positive has happened to us or our people. That is expressive joy. The simcha of Adar, by contrast, is therapeutic joy.

Imagine what it is to be part of a people that had once heard the command issued against them: “to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews – young and old, women and children – on a single day” (Esther 3:13). We who live after the Holocaust, who have met survivors, heard their testimony, seen the photographs and documentaries and memorials, know the answer to that question. On Purim, the Final Solution was averted. But it had been pronounced. Ever afterward, Jews knew their vulnerability. The very existence of Purim in our historical memory is traumatic.

The Jewish response to trauma is counter-intuitive and extraordinary. You defeat fear by joy. You conquer terror by collective celebration. You prepare a festive meal, invite guests, give gifts to friends. While the story is being told, you make an unruly noise as if not only to blot out the memory of Amalek, but to make a joke out of the whole episode. You wear masks. You drink a little too much. You make a Purim spiel.

Precisely because the threat was so serious, you refuse to be serious – and in that refusal you are doing something very serious indeed. You are denying your enemies a victory. You are declaring that you will not be intimidated. As the date of the scheduled destruction approaches, you surround yourself with the single most effective antidote to fear: joy in life itself. As the three-sentence summary of Jewish history puts it: “They tried to destroy us. We survived. Let’s eat.” Humour is the Jewish way of defeating hate. What you can laugh at, you cannot be held captive by.

I learned this from a Holocaust survivor. Some years ago, I wrote a book called Celebrating Life. It was a cheer-you-up book, and it became a favourite of the Holocaust survivors. One of them, however, told me that a particular passage in the book was incorrect. Commenting on Roberto Begnini’s comedy film about the Holocaust, Life is Beautiful, I had said that though I agreed with his thesis – a sense of humour keeps you sane – that was not enough in Auschwitz to keep you alive.

“On that, you are wrong,” the survivor said, and then told me his story. He had been in Auschwitz, and he soon realised that if he failed to keep his spirits up, he would die. So he made a pact with another young man, that they would both look out, each day, for some occurrence they found amusing. At the end of each day they would tell one another their story and they would laugh together. “That sense of humour saved my life,” he said. I stood corrected. He was right.

That is what we do on Purim. The joy, the merrymaking, the food, the drink, the whole carnival atmosphere, are there to allow us to live with the risks of being a Jew – in the past, and tragically in the present also – without being terrified, traumatised or intimidated. It is the most counter-intuitive response to terror, and the most effective. Terrorists aim to terrify. To be a Jew is to refuse to be terrified.

A people that can know the full darkness of history and yet rejoice is a people whose spirit no power on Earth can ever break.

Terror, hatred, and violence are always ultimately self-destructive. Those who use these tactics are always, as was Haman, destroyed by their very will to destruct. And yes, we as Jews must fight antisemitism, the demonisation of Israel, and the intimidation of Jewish students on campus. But we must never let ourselves be intimidated – and the Jewish way to avoid this is marbim be-simcha, to increase our joy. A people that can know the full darkness of history and yet rejoice is a people whose spirit no power on Earth can ever break.

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I am proud to be part of a people who, though scarred and traumatised, never lost their humour or their faith, their ability to laugh at present troubles and still believe in ultimate redemption, who saw human history as a journey, and never stopped travelling and searching.

I am proud to be part of an age in which my people, ravaged by the worst crime ever to be committed against a people, responded by reviving a land, recovering their sovereignty, rescuing threatened Jews throughout the world, rebuilding Jerusalem, and proving themselves to be as courageous in the pursuit of peace as in defending themselves in war.

Radical Then, Radical Now, p. 219

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