With one exception, all Jewish holidays relate to the land of Israel, to ancient festivals, Temple rites, and local victories. That exception is Purim, the special holiday of Jews of the Diaspora, which is celebrated one month before Passover. And while Passover has eclipsed Purim in the popular imagination, there is a sense in which the deliverance commemorated by Purim is the more miraculous of the two.
According to the Book of Esther, the Jews of the Persian city of Shushan (Susa) were saved from Haman’s plot to kill them through the wile and courage of Mordecai, a Jew who “sat at the palace gate,” and his niece Esther, King Ahasuerus’s recent replacement for his deposed queen. When Mordecai learned that Haman, the king’s chief counselor, planned to exterminate all the Jews of the realm, he pressed Queen Esther into the service of their people, and together they turned the tables on their enemy. In the end, Haman and his sons were hanged on the gallows they had erected for Mordecai, the Jews destroyed those who had been waiting to take over their properties, and the day that was to have marked their execution was transformed from a fast of mourning into a feast of rejoicing.
Small wonder that Purim became, in later Jewish history, the inebriated holiday of a sober people, a day of inversions and uncharacteristically raucous celebration. The custom, instituted in Europe, of mounting Purim plays gave grown men leave to cavort like children; community wits were appointed rabbis for the day, to mock the synagogue service and its leaders. During the traditional Purim reading of the Scroll (megillah) of Esther in the synagogue, the congregation raises a hellish din at every mention of the name Haman; some Orthodox synagogues annually install green and red lights to try to control the cacophony. On Purim, one gets the impression that Jewish sanity and discipline hang by a hair.
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Purim is the zaniest holiday of the Jewish calendar because it celebrates the most improbable event in Jewish history—the political victory of the Jews over their self-proclaimed foes. Until the modern period, Jews were so intimately attached to this holiday that whenever families or communities felt they had been similarly spared from destruction, they would institute a Purim-like celebration—complete with special prayers and a special feast—on the anniversary of their rescue.
In the modern period, however, the holiday became politically incorrect, and the forthright satisfaction it takes in the destruction of the enemy became such an acute embarrassment that some Reform congregations banished it from the calendar.
And what about today? Can we really imagine Jews highly placed in government or Jewish “beautiful people” risking their careers, let alone their lives, to plead the cause of the Jews? If a contemporary Mordecai were to gain an edge in the inner circles of government, can one imagine him going about gathering data on the Arab war against Israel—today’s equivalent of Haman—and feeding it to the head of his government so as to save his fellow Jews from harm? There are four Jews centrally involved in the making of policy toward Israel in the administration of George Bush—Dennis Ross, Aaron David Miller, Richard Haass, and Daniel Kurtzer, known to some as the Four Jewish Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Is this what they have been doing on behalf of the threatened Jewish polity of today?
And Esther? Would a contemporary Jewish woman in so high a position risk everything for the sake of her people? Would she bargain away her “goals” of personal self-fulfillment to help save the Jews from destruction? The more one thinks about it, the more one realizes that although the Book of Esther does not contain the name of God, it may indeed commemorate the most miraculous Jewish event of all.
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One of the best known and most controversial teachings related to Purim is that of the talmudic sage Rava (Tractate Megillah 7b): a man is obliged to drink so much wine on Purim that he no longer knows whether he is cursing Haman or blessing Mordecai. The Israeli term for the Purim carnival—Adloyadah—means, “until he no longer knows,” and is taken from this teaching. Like the author of the Book of Esther, the rabbis of the Talmud considered the moral distance between Haman and Mordecai so great that blurring their names became a way of representing true drunkenness, the temporary suspension of judgment in absolute revelry.
Modern Jews do not celebrate Purim to this degree, and for an obvious reason: more and more of them, especially in high places, are unable to distinguish between cursing Haman and blessing Mordecai even when they are stone sober.
