Purim (General)

What Sort of a Day is Purim?

A little-known passage in the Tur (Orah Hayyim 696) presents three different views of the formal halakhic status of Purim, in terms of the halakhic litmus test of “aveilut,” the laws of mourning. That is, how does Purim affect the status of an individual who is sitting shiva for a parent, spouse, etc., at the time?

Three opinions are expressed: One, that of the She’iltot and Sefer ha-Miktzo’ot, that it cancels mourning completely, similar to the festival days; in other words, that Purim is tantamount to the major pilgrimage festivals! The second, attributed to R. Meir of Rotenburg, the Mordekhai and the Rosh, is that mourning is suspended for the entire 48 hours of Purim and Shushan Purim, analogous to Shabbat, the mourner returning to his mourning at its conclusion. Third, the Sefer ha-Rokeah, Rambam, and others, hold that we essentially treat it as a weekday: that is, the person sits shivah but, if necessary, may leave his home to go to synagogue to hear the reading of the Megillah, returning immediately thereafter.

Accepted practice follows the third opinion. Nevertheless, the very existence of such a discussion, and the possibility of the other options mentions, reflects a real dilemma among the early rishonim as to how to treat Purim. On the one hand, Purim was perceived and accepted by the communities as one of the major festive days; as a day commemorating the deliverance from destruction of a Galut Jewish community, it no doubt appealed to the reality of Jews in medieval Europe and elsewhere, seeming closer to their own experience than did the great biblical holidays. On the other hand, formally speaking it was a week-day, without any restrictions on performing labor.

In fact, Purim is an anomalous day, sui generis in Jewish life: it is a day of festivity, very similar to Yom Tov (in fact, it is even called such in the Megillah: 9:19, 22), but lacking in kedushat hayom, formal “sanctity of the day.” Essentially, it may be defined halakhically as a day of mishteh ve-simhah: a day devoted to feasting and rejoicing, reinforced by the familiar mitzvot of sending monetary gifts to rejoice the poor, food-stuffs to ones friends and neighbors, and the ceremonial reading of the Scroll telling the story of the holiday in both evening and morning—but without any special status beyond that. What does such a status indicate?

To this, one must add two other wide-spread, popular features of Purim. First, drinking: throughout the Jewish world, this was and is a day when people drink, if not to excess, than certainly far more than on any other days. An extravagant statement in the Talmud states that: “A man is required to drink on Purim ad delo yada —until he no longer knows the difference between ‘Blessed is Mordecai’ and ‘Cursed is Haman’…..” (Megillah 7b). This statement was taken literally by some; in yeshiva circles, one always sees at least a few boys who take this obligation must seriously, at times with embarrassing and humiliating results. This is of course in stark contrast with the usually sober and dignified self-image of Jewish culture (“shiker is a goy”).

Likewise, the phrase “Venahafokh hu” (“and it was turned about”; Est 9:1) is used as a motto for the upside-down nature of the world of Purim: dressing in masquerade, doing silly things, Purim rebbes, etc.—in brief, a Jewish carnival. Certainly, one way of looking at this is to say that this is a Jewish version of something universal in human culture: the need to break loose, at least once a year, of traditional strictures; to make fun of the persona that oneself, and ones neighbor, wears all year long. Coincidentally or not, Purim usually falls quite close to Mardi Gras, the Christian carnival season that precedes Lent, especially beloved in Mediterranean-like Catholic cultures: viz. Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, etc.

But there may be a deeper meaning to this as well. Some decades ago, radical Christian theologian Harvey Cox wrote a book entitled Festival of Fools, celebrating and analyzing this phenomenon (He used to visit the Havurat Shalom in Boston on Purim days back in the ‘70’s, doubtless doing “field research”). As I remember it, he claimed that the carnival was a kind of acting out, in a clownish way, of the great mystic truth that reality as we perceive it is an illusion, a masking or concealing of the underlying Divine unity; the first step in achieving religious knowledge lies in breaking through this mask (compare also the role of paradox in the Zen way of instruction leading toward enlightenment). Similarly, one may argue that the “religious anarchism” and vaguely bohemian aspects found in Hasidic life stem from the same source: to arrive at a thorough-going honesty and truth about oneself by breaking down adherence to ordinary social convention. “Pour épater la bourgeoisie” was a well-known Hasidic attitude.

All these things point in the direction of the interpretation, found in innumerable Hasidic books and elsewhere, of Purim as the holiday of paradox. There is even a hyperbolic statement in the Tikkunei ha-Zohar that Yom Kippur is compared to Purim: Yom Hakippurim=Yom ke-Purim (“a day like Purim,” i.e., that the sanctity of Yom Kippur is to be inferred from Purim, which is really the most sacred day of all!).

Theologically, the blatant secularity of Purim (both in its formal halakhic status and in the behavior characteristic of that day) suggests the hiddenness of God. The gemara makes this point in a word-play, in which it derives the name Esther from hastarat panim, the hiding of the Divine face: “Whence is [the book of] Esther alluded to in the Torah? In the verse ‘I will surely hide (haster astir) my face from them’ (Deut 31:18]” (Hullin 139b). Viewed from “outside,” the Book of Esther reads like a romantic novella, set in the remote, exotic, “Arabian Nights” setting of the royal court of a Levantine emperor (although the historical sitz im leben was no doubt real enough at the time of composition). Superficially, a purely secular story (again, suitable to Purim), filled with improbable twists and turns and coincidences. The female lead uses her sexuality in a degrading and/or scheming manner to gain a place of power and influence in order to save her people.

Thus, the world of the Megillah is not one of blatant, open, miraculous intervention by God in the natural order of nature and of society; on the contrary, it is one in which miracles, if at all, are hidden. Divine providence is not easily felt or obvious; interestingly, God’s name does not appear even once in the entire book (only once, in 4:14, is there an allusion that “relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from ‘another place’”). The world depicted is one ruled by chaos, by chance, by “luck”—or, worse: by power, by Machiavellian machinations, by clever, cheap exploitation of sexuality, etc. Put differently, it is a world which, on the face of it, seems to support the validity of those arguments that would support the atheist or agnostic case. And it is from here that one needs to somehow come full circle to faith affirmations.

But quite apart from the theological paradoxes, the Book of Esther is a fascinating work. Limitations of time and space don’t allow me to present more than a few brief insights on this level. The characters of Esther and Mordecai, and the interplay between the two, are interesting. Esther deliberately conceals her Jewish identity when she goes to the king; like Yosef (who is also described as yefeh to’ar, pleasing in appearance!), she may be seen as an assimilationist type: a female Kissinger or Disraeli, but one whose highly placed position is turned to the advantage of her people in the end. Her uncle/guardian Mordecai, by contrast, represents the older generation, who maintain strong ethnic & religious identity. Ahasuerus is portrayed as a bumbling fool, more interested in drink and women that in serious attention to conducting affairs of state. Or is this to be read as Jewish satire, mocking the “goyim nakhis” of the much-celebrated kings of the Gentiles?

I will conclude with one question, relating to the opening scene of the book. When Vashti refuses to appear before the assembled nobles wearing her crown (only, says the Midrash) to show off her beauty, the king sends an order throughout the kingdom that all the women should show respect to their husbands, be they high or low (1:20-22). In today’s communities, the reading of this verse is usually greeted with hoots of derision. Is it be read as an ironic comment on Ahasuerus’ pompous pretension, to think that he could in fact order by fiat the behavior of women within their own homes; or should it be read in straightforward fashion, reflecting the unquestioned male supremacist attitudes of the time? Either way, it seems to me, the king comes out looking like a fool.

Purim: Some Afterthoughts

1. Last week we spoke about the carnival aspect of Purim, with its mystical and theological meanings. I would now like to elaborate upon the more somber side of Purim. (Properly speaking, this is actually the central message of Shabbat Zakhor, the Shabbat prior to Purim; that Shabbat is dedicated to the remembering of Amalek and the commandment to “eradicate his memory from under the face of heaven” -- a problematic issue in its own right, which I would call “coping with the ‘battered people’ syndrome.”)

The historical significance of Purim is deeply rooted in the painful side of Jewish history: the reality or threat of virulent anti-semitism, as represented by the threat of destruction posed by Haman. Jews, living as (at times barely) tolerated aliens, and periodically suffering persecutions and pogroms in the countries where they lived, whether in Europe, the Mediterranean countries, or in the Middle East, could easily identify with the story told in the Megillah. This doubtless accounts for the great appeal of Purim, which was elevated to a quasi-Yom Tov status. Whatever may or may not have been the reality of the Purim story in ancient Persia, it spoke to a very profound place in the Jewish historical psyche. Precisely because this reality was so frightening, representing the darkest, most serious existential threat, the hilarity and drunkenness of Purim developed as a way of coping psychologically.

On a certain level, Purim may be viewed as the flip side of Tisha b’Av (the day of fasting and mourning for the destruction of the Temple, in mid-summer); in a sense, these two diametrically opposed days may be read as two reactions to the same awful bind. Purim, as we noted earlier, is a holiday of hullin, of pure secularity. It reflects the absence or concealment of Gods’ face, in which history is seemingly conducted in a blind, meaningless way, by a collection of clowns, buffoons and worse: whether lecherous, drunken fools or ego-driven, murderous villains.

But whereas Purim has a “happy end,” and celebrates the Divine Providence behind this facade, Tisha B’Av bemoans the tragic events that result from this hester panim, expressing a stark awareness of this negative side of Jewish destiny. Rav Soloveitchik ztz”l often spoke of Tisha B’Av as a day when one could challenge God with the most impudent, radical, “heretical” questions: “How, O God, could you allow this to happen?” He saw the motto of the day as “You have covered yourself with a cloud, so that no prayer can pass through” (Lam 3:44): again, Divine silence and deafness. More on this at the proper time.

The contrapuntal parallels between the two, if one may use such a phrase, are many. Two contrasting phrases are used to characterize the months in which they occur: “Once Adar enters, joy increases …”; “Once Av enters, joy is decreased…” During the reading of the megillah, the melancholy melody of the book of Eikhah (Lamentations) is used for certain verses alluding to the destruction of the Temple or to the impending doom facing the Jews of Shushan, setting off dramatically the light-hearted melody of the megillah. Likewise, hester panim, which is such a central theme of Tisha B’Av, also appears on Purim in the famous pun on Esther’s name (see last week’s Hitzei).

2. Another insight on the theme of the secular character of Purim relates to the laws of the Megillah. In contrast to the writing of a Torah scroll—or tefillin, or even a mezuzah—the laws governing the actual making of the Megillah are extremely lenient. There is no need to prepare the parchment from the animal hide lishmah, i.e., with specific intention that it be used for a sacred purpose; nor need the actual act of writing be done for the sake of the mitzvah: it is enough that it not be written by a Gentile or an apikoris (heretic or unbeliever). Even the manner of stitching the different sections of the scroll together is far less thorough and complete than in the case of a Sefer Torah. All this adds up to a lower level of sanctity: a Megillah is not a sacred object, but only a “mitzvah object,” enjoying a lower formal status.

3. At times, real historical events intrude upon the theological or mythical realm. Those of us who have lived in Israel for a while can remember quite a few Purims which seemed overshadowed by actual events. Two Purims in the early 1980’s were marred by the funerals of Torah greats, attended by tens of thousands of Jews: both Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Zvi Yehudah Kook, ztz”l, were buried on Shushan Purim in Jerusalem. Purim 1992 marked the conclusion of the Gulf War, that strange conflict in which the proud and powerful Israeli Army was forced by political constraints into total passivity (echoes of Galut?). For many Jerusalemites, the reading of the megillah was the first occasion in a month and a half when we were able to leave our homes without the omnipresent gas masks. Then there was the awful Purim of 1994, when a Hebron settler named Baruch Goldstein decided to act out his own Purimshpeil of retribution by the Jews against their (supposed) enemies.

Last year, the juxtaposition of Purim with Pope John Paul II’s pilgrimage to the “Holy Land” added a strange tone to the holiday. The living symbol of that institution which has, over the past two millennia, symbolized more than any other anti-semitism and the making of the Jew into a mythical pariah figure (ironically, Ahasuerus is one of the names of the Wandering Jew in medieval Christian legend), was a guest in the State of the Jews. He visited its president in his official mansion (he doesn’t know what an old buffoon the man is!); stands in tearful silence at Yad Vashem; inserted a kvitel in the Kotel asking forgiveness from the God of Abraham… Surely, this event, too, runs counter to the stereotypes as to how things are supposed to go according to the Purim script. No ones quite knew how to react. The Haredim and ultra-nationalists shouted “Gevalt!”; the secularists fall over themselves to say how wonderful he is—so much nicer and more dignified than that nasty rabbi in Har Nof with the fancy robes. As usual in human affairs, the truth falls somewhere in the middle.

4. Re: my comment last week about Ahasuerus’s decree at the end of Chapter 1 that all the women should respect their husbands. One of the few sober moments at our own Purim seudah last year involved a discussion about the final phrase of this chapter: “that every man should rule in his own house, and speak in the language of his people” (umedaber bilshon amo; 1:22). Rashi explains this enigmatic phrase by saying that “the wives are compelled to speak in the language of their husbands.” One of the significant areas in which a husband may assert his dominance is by insisting that the language of the home be his language, and not that of his wife. Such a decree only makes sense in a setting in which there were in fact a large number of inter-lingual marriages: that is, a multi-ethnic empire with much intermarriage, resulting either from migration from place to place, or from the presence of large numbers of military and bureaucratic personnel stationed in the provinces (reminiscent of the heyday of the British empire) who married local women (also like the Arabs in North Africa etc. during the Moslem conquests). (Actually, this is a bit strange: the reality familiar to us from the twentieth century is that immigrants tend to marry their own people, at least in the first generation; intermarriage usually occurs once the children or grandchildren of the “greenhorns” grow up feeling more comfortable in the new language; viz. the Jews, Italians, Greeks, Poles, Scandinavians, etc. etc. in America; the various ethnic groups among the Jews in Israel; and so on.) And indeed, one of the leif motifs of the Megillah is the phrase, used each time a royal missal is sent, “to each state according to its writing; and to each people according to their speech” (1:22; 3:12; 8:9)—that is, in all of the written and spoken languages. The question is: if there were so many different groups, why did the fact that the Jews had their own customs bother so, not only Haman, but those who responded to his call? Food for thought (while you’re thinking about it, take another hamantasch ….)

5. About the “obligation” to drink on Purim: alongside those Hasidic homilies which find mystical meaning in the “altered consciousness” of Purim, there is a more sober strand in halakhah, which essentially rejects the idea of drunkenness even on Purim, being ever wary of the dangers involved in the excesses of a carnival-like atmosphere. This approach sees Purim as a week day with certain mitzvot, one of which is feasting (with just enough wine to make you drowsy—so that while discretely napping at the table one doesn’t know the difference between Haman and Mordecai; Sh. A., Orah Hayyim 695.2, Ram”a citing Maharil). If you will, a form of “sober drunkenness,” befitting the gravity of a God-fearing Jew. Indeed, Maimonides repeatedly draws a distinction between “frivolity and light-headedness” (holelut vekalut rosh) and true simhah, which he equates with the quiet, steadily joyous attitude felt in the service of God (Hil. Yom Tov 6.17-22, esp. 20; Lulav 8.14-15). In the case of Purim, he especially emphasizes the ethical moment of rejoicing the poor and misfortunate, which he interprets as an act of imitatio dei (Megillah 2.16-17)

An alternative reading would say that every human potentiality—even frivolity and silliness—has its role in the Divine scheme of things. While, doubtless, the rejoicing we are commanded on the other festivals is intertwined with seriousness and dignity and piety and awareness of the telos of life, the ”secular” nature of the days of Purim actually calls for a certain frivolity. Maybe one can speak of a kind of sacred kalut rosh as in irony, a mocking of the negative things in life, including the pomposity and pretentiousness and self-importance that too often accompany—or should one say, substitute for—true piety. (See Rav Adin Steinsaltz’s discussion of the four negative elements in the soul, including the “airy” element of frivolity, in his Biur Tanya, I:59-60).

Purim and Mardi Gras

In order to answer our original question from Part I—namely, why do we read such a somber, sobering text as Psalm 22 on such a happy festival as Purim?—I would like to examine another issue: what is the relationship between Purim and other festivals, pagan or Christian, in which ordinary social limits and conventions are thrust aside?

A number of anthropologists have suggested a parallel between Purim and such festivities as Mardi Gras (lit., “fat Tuesday”—the last day of indulgence before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, the 40-day period of mourning ending in Easter), tracing both to a common pagan source (perhaps a spring equinox festival?). In a similar vein, Protestant theologian Harvey Cox, in his book Feast of Fools (written, significantly, just as the Hippy movement was getting started in the mid-‘60s), wrote of the need for cultures to allow room for frivolity and fantasy, which e aw embodied in some of the festivals of medieval Europe. Such festivals served as occasions for letting down social masks, for poking fun at social institutions, both secular and sacred, for permitting a certain rude social equality, when the “little people” could say whatever they wanted without fear of reprisal (in some medieval festivals, jesters would, for one day, take the place of preachers), and for relaxing some of the barriers and taboos ordinarily so strictly enforced. Cox himself, interestingly, was a regular visitor at the Purim celebrations in the Havurat Shalom in Boston for a number of years.

What is the essence of the “festival of fools”? In addition to those features mentioned by Cox, one element is what might be called a kind of protest against the human condition itself—the inevitability of death, of human weakness and limitations, etc. It was a kind of celebration of life itself, a proud defiance of those things which would make us bow our heads in defeat and despair, a laughing of all that would ordinarily make us tremble in fear and anxiety.

Albert Camus, in a moving essay entitled “Summer in Algiers,” describes the young people of the Mediterranean cities, at the height of their youth, radiating a kind of raw strength and energy and vitality, a sheer joy and pleasure of being alive—without any illusions of it lasting for ever, and without any transcendent justification “beyond.” And he describes the older people watching them, remembering their own youth, knowing how quickly it fades, and how that very electricity between youth and maiden will inevitably end in harassed family life and a resigned middle age. He writes there, “If there is a sin against life, it is not perhaps so much to despair of life, as to hope for another life and to lose sight of the implacable grandeur of this one.” And elsewhere, “Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.” Although Camus does not write specifically of festivals or carnivals, the message is much the same: festivals are a kind of rebellion against the human condition, of the “banishment from Eden,” a return to the illusion or hope of eternal youth.

Another very powerful element is of course the sexual. Such festivals as the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro or Mardi Gras in New Orleans are a kind of “moral holiday” from the strict moral and sexual discipline of Christianity; a kind of surging up of pagan elements that have been suppressed and existed just beneath the surface of nominal Christendom. The very word “Mardi Gras” conjures up images of sensuous music and dancing, of young girls barely dressed, of breast flashing, etc. Spanish essayist Mario Vargas Llosa, describes the morning after the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro as thick with the aroma of sex, of a the very air pervaded with the “dense vapor of animal satisfaction.” (This seems especially so in the Mediterranean countries, where there is an ongoing struggle between the frank sexuality of the older cultures against the imposed morality of religion. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Islamic culture of North Africa, with its Berber roots, is more tolerant and relaxed than is that of the harsh, semi-arid countries like Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, which seem to be breeding grounds for the strictest, most militant forms of Islam. In our own tiny country, a contrast is often drawn between the earthy atmosphere of the sea-and-sun soaked Tel Aviv, and the stern, holy atmosphere of the rocky, mountainous Jerusalem.)

Purim is different. Clearly, it has little of the overt sexuality of the Latin American or Mediterranean carnival. Jewish tradition is in that respect very strict and uncompromising on certain norms. What there is, in large measure, is a turning about of the social order; a mocking or parody of pretense, of sanctimonious, of certain conventional truths in the “Purim speil” or “Purim rebbe,” who satirizes convention.

There is also a kind of liberation from the famous Jewish worship of the mind. In the Hasidic tradition, especially, there are innumerable homilies celebrating the famed ideal of drunkenness on Purim as allowing for a transcendence of the merely cognitive, rational mode of knowing. There is a sense in which, say, the Talmudic scholar, by obliterating his ordinary mode of disciplined reasoning and erudition and allowing his mind roam free reaches a higher level of apprehension of the Divine. (A few days I saw a colorful poster for the month of Adar, of the kind sold in Meah Shearim, which connected the phrase ad delo yada—“[one should drink] until he doesn’t know…”—with the philosophical statement, Takhlit ha-yedi’ah shelo neda—“the epitome of knowledge is knowing that we don’t know: i.e., the ultimate unknowableness of God and His ways.)

But most important—and here Purim is most different from other “festivals of fools”—Purim is a festival of defiance, not only or primarily of the human condition but, especially, of the painful reality of the Jewish condition in the Exile. We will elaborate on this point in the next section.

Purim Postscripts

I would like to translate some of the rather abstruse mystical ideas I presented in the Purim eve issue into more down-to-earth terms. One of the guests at our Purim feast told us of a seemingly trivial incident in her life: she once parked her car in the lot of a vast industrial complex, and realized to her chagrin that she had forgotten where she had left it. After praying to God for assistance and just starting to walk, she found that her feet took her to the right place “by themselves.” Beyond the religious aspect of prayer answered, what she described illustrates the power of the subconscious—that part of her being which, when she allowed her conscious will to relax, knew exactly where to find the lost object.

This little story, whose like all of us have experienced at one point or another in our lives, can serve as a metaphor for the aim of the act of drinking on Purim, so celebrated by Hasidic texts—to bring to the surface of our religious life that selfsame subconscious. It seems to me that one of the central motifs of our age—the age of post-modernism, of the “New Age” renewal of interest in spirituality, etc.—is that of disappointment in rationalism, of a growing awareness of the limitations, if not aridity, of the purely empirical, objective, scientific approach to world. There is wish to rediscover and recover those pre-conscious depth truths that may serve as a more faithful guide to the mystery of our lives; those archetypal images in which our world, like Jacob’s ladder, is but one rung on a continuum linking heaven and earth—what Huston Smith, in his marvelous, little-known book calls The Forgotten Truth.

What has all this to do with Purim and the Book of Esther—that little book which it is hard to know whether to take as historical account, as farce, or as a kind of festival pageant, as recently suggested by Adele Berlin? The central theological insight of Purim is that the deliverance of Purim took place through a series of fortuitous accidents or coincidences, which were really the hidden working of the Divine hand. Almost none of the actors in the Purim story were consciously trying to do anything great or heroic, but were simply acting out their all-too-human motivations. Haman acted from whatever combination of hatred, jealousy, ambition, evil, and share cussedness made up his personality; King Ahasuerus, from a mixture of stupidity, laziness, lasciviousness, and arbitrariness born from having more power than he knew what to do with. Vashti, to be sure, expresses a certain dignity, courage, the refusal to be humiliated or treated as an object. Even Mordecai and Esther can be seen as following what was essentially a personal agenda for survival and, perhaps, the desire of a step-father to seek “the best” for his adopted ward—although Mordecai, to be sure, was also moved by a deep piety and tenacious religiosity, that refused to submit to flesh and blood whatever the consequences, as well by a sense of responsibility and caring for his community and people. And through all this, without conscious or directed effort of any of the principals, God brought about the redemptive turnabout. Good reason for seeing the holiday as emblematic of the power of the subconscious forces in human life. An interesting caveat: my wife dissents from the idea that drunkenness can be spiritual; the idea of reaching an authentic spiritual high based on the use of mind-altering substances has been shown to be illusory. (Note all the bad LSD trips of the ‘60’s, and the minds destroyed by the “Ecstasy” of the ‘90s’.) I must concur, at least in part: I have seen traits of ugliness, aggressiveness, and just plain nastiness brought out by Purim drinking among people who are ordinarily polite, considerate, and decent. Perhaps the Purim drunk—assuming it goes beyond the pleasantly tipsy—is to be seen more as a “Platonic,” archetypal ideal than as an actual event.

To return to the issues mentioned earlier about the zeitgeist: musicologist Daniel Shalit, speaking on the classical music station, quoted a comment by composer Lukas Foss that “there are no more masterpieces”: that is, that the modern age is not hospitable—culturally, spiritually, or psychologically—to masterpieces of the like of the Beethoven symphonies or late quartets or, one might add, in other fields, Rembrandt’s paintings, Leonardo murals, Shakespeare’s plays, or Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Modern works of art seem to be imbued with a kind of cynicism, a pessimism born of the catastrophic and dehumanizing events of the twentieth century, the failure of all ideologies, that sees all of man’s idealistic dreams with a kind of caustic irony. Similarly, Erich Fromm, in an afterword to a paperback edition of Orwell’s 1984, traces the move from the trilogy of utopias written during and the Renaissance of the 16th and 17th centuries, to the emergence of the “negative utopia” during the mid-twentieth century. He notes the paradox: modern man, who enjoys the benefits of a developed industrial and technological culture, feels helpless and powerless, while the men of the immediate post-medieval period, which enjoyed far more limited material wealth and conveniences, was imbued with hope and self-confidence. Fromm goes on to connect this, not only with the phenomenon of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, as well as the more subtle forms of manipulation and thought control (Orwell’s ”doublethink”) that exist in Western, supposedly free and democratic societies, as well.

Shalit noted the correlation between the loss of faith in man and eclipse of God. I found this point most interesting: we often think of humanism as akin to a kind of vulgar atheism, counterpoises secular humanism to authoritarian religion, which it sees as stifling man’s creative powers. Indeed, here in Israel, many secularists—and religionists—still seem to be fighting the battles of the 19th century Haskalah (Eastern Jewish Enlightenment). Yet things may be seen in opposite fashion: humanism and religion may in fact work as allies in maintaining that which is best and most noble in human culture against the onslaught of forces of destruction and darkness. The living God is the source of human strength; man created in the image of God has an innate dignity and nobility absent in man the purely biological creature, whose deepest thoughts and feelings may be reduced to electrical impulses in the brain, and who may in principle (I have seen this idea suggested by at least one newspaper publicist) be replaced by a computer. A direct line may be drawn from the lack of belief in both man and God to the mood of despair and hedonism that marks our age: if there is no God, and no ultimate meaning to our lives beyond biology, than why not seek the most intense pleasure available in the body—through libertine sex, drugs, the rush of adrenaline that comes with taking physical risks, etc. (see Zornberg, yet again, on the dance round the Golden Calf as “a grotesque parody… of ultimate harmony,” as the “unalloyed exhilaration in regressing to a world before time”; pp. 421-423).

What I am invoking here is not a simple return to the “old-time religion,” or the message that humanism is doomed to failure without renewed faith in God. On the contrary, I would call on religious Jews to realize that we are on the same side of the battlefield, against the dehumanization innate in technological civilization. The common denominator is the belief in the ultimate meaning and value implicit in life; whether this is called God or the human spirit is, on a certain level, more an issue of semantics than of substance. Punctiliousness observance of ritual, or filling the yeshivot with 100,000 bokhurim, will not save our civilization. The new age of renewed interest in spirituality must not suffice with the cultivation of profound states of inwardness, but must address humankind’s loss of faith in itself, and the cultural crisis that threatens our very survival. We confront a Purim writ large—but we are as yet before the happy ending.

* * * *

1) Some further thoughts about Rambam’s statement (Megillah 2.18) that the Scroll of Esther alone, among all the holy writings, will still be read in the days of Messiah: The key to understanding this lies, in my opinion, in the verse quoted from Isaiah 65 following his quotation from the midrash (see HV V: Tetzaveh). “Even though the remembrance of the troubles shall be negated, as is said, ‘for the early troubles shall be forgotten… ‘ the days of Purim shall not be abolished.” This suggests to me a certain understanding, not so much of Purim, but rather of (a) the nature of memory and of our relation to history, and (b) the nature of messianic times.

There are two components to Purim: the idea that God ultimately, in however hidden ways, delivers the Jewish people from their troubles; and that which precedes it—namely, that in the situation of unredeemed history, these troubles are bound to happen in the first place. Purim is thus paradigmatic of the Jewish situation of existential insecurity in an unredeemed world—what is referred to in shorthand as Galut, “Exile”; and perhaps too, more broadly, of the human condition generally: the power of aggression, of gratuitous hatred of the other, of wanton destruction of other human beings. “Man is a wolf to man.” Rambam is telling us that, notwithstanding the eradication of all such troubles, and the elimination of their cause, and even their forgetting, it is nevertheless important to go on remembering them. This is reminiscent of the paradox implied in the commandment, “Remember Amalek… so that you may eradicate his very memory” (Deut 25:19).

Rambam would argue that, notwithstanding the peace and tranquility and plentitude that will reign during the messianic age, the essentials of the human condition, as of human nature, will not change. This is at the core of the dispute between Rambam and many other thinkers concerning the nature of the change brought about by in the Messianic world: will it be miraculous or naturalistic? For Maimonides, there will be a change in the political situation of the Jewish people, and in the objective physical conditions in the world, that will make life easier—but the basic human condition will remain the same.

A well known midrash tells how a group of Sages “slaughtered” the Yetzer Hara, the power of eros, of sexuality—and soon saw that, without these elemental urges, there can be no life. Did Hazal believe the urge for aggression, for destruction, to be similarly essential? Might it be that the Yetzer Hara of Thanatos, which Freud identified as the “Death Wish,” is as eternal as that of Eros? An intriguing question. Or even if this is not so, does the eternal observance of Purim somehow provide a remembrance of something that it is essential to know even in a redeemed world? Or did Rambam want it remembered, so that even in the Eschaton it not sneak in, so to speak, through the back door? Perhaps on the deepest level Purim is to be read, more than anything else, as the celebration of the victory of Life over Death, one chapter in a never-ending struggle between the two.

2) For many years, Rav Adin Steinsaltz would hold an informal farbrengen, a Hasidic gathering, with long-time friends and students on Purim night, close to midnight. On such occasions, he would often expound the Zohar’s statement that Yom Kippur is thus called because it is “a day like Purim” (yom ke-purim). He would explain this by saying that, paradoxically, Purim is more amenable to thoughts of teshuvah than Yom Kippur, precisely because on Purim, after eating and drinking, perhaps dancing a bit and hanging out with his friends, a person feels happy, relaxed, looser, freer.

I understand this to imply that, on Yom Kippur, a person expects to hear moralizing, “uplifting,” “inspiring” words—and in his heart of hearts, he feels that this is all pious talk. On a certain level, the preacher is not speaking from his own humanity, his own earthy, desirous side. On Yom Kippur, the midrash tells us, we are on the level of angels, or at least we try to be so, detached from all physical needs and appetites. In such a situation, there is a feeling of unreality, that the moralist may be pretending to a superiority, a self-discipline and “burning out” of the Evil Urge, that is somehow inauthentic. What the French call mauvais faux, “bad faith”—the number one sin in the lexicon of Sartre and the existentialists.

On Purim, on the other hand, when everyone is eating, drinking, telling stories, joking, having a good time, there is a sense in which all talk is much realer. If, on Purim, someone who is a little tipsy says that he loves to learn Torah, to daven, to do mitzvot, it is more likely that he really feels thus—because it is good to be a Jew, because there is an authentic sense of love of God, and love of Torah—and not merely pious, artificial moralizing.

This dovetails with the story of Purim, as a day of gratitude for the mere fact of being alive, of our lives having been spared in the bad old days of Haman and his cohorts. Perhaps this is the meaning of the midrash that the Jews reaccepted the Torah willingly on Purim: namely, that on a day of victory of life over death, we are able to accept Torah with our strongest life-affirming forces.

Purim, then, is the holiday of integration of the earthly and the spiritual. (This may also be the appeal of Mordecai Gafni’s paganism-prophetism / eros–ethos syncretism, which we critiqued sharply in these pages nearly a year ago [HY IV: Kedoshim]. Yet too contains an element of truth, provided that eros is not elevated to a deity, and that one does not introduce something very much like a dualism, as he could be construed as doing.)

3) We mentioned earlier the idea that God’s hidden presence in the seemingly chance events of the Megillah story is indicated by the repeated uses of the word Ha-Melekh, “the King,” which alludes simultaneously to Ahasuerus and to the Almighty King of Kings (Esther Rabbah at 1:9). Indeed, many Purim scrolls are deliberately written in such a fashion that the word Hamelekh appears as the first word in each column.

It would be interesting to follow through on this idea in some detail. What meaning would be derived were we to read specific verses with this dual meaning? There are some cases where this is done, of course, the classic example being Esther 6:1 “on that night the king’s sleep was disturbed”—that is, not only was the Persian monarch restless, but God on High was worried about the imminent threat to His people, and set in motion the events that would turn the tide. Or, “and the king’s anger was assuaged” (7:10), after Haman’s execution. But other verses evoke interesting associations. For example: “Any man or woman who approaches the king’s inner court without being called is subject to death… unless the king extends them his golden scepter” (4:11). Can this be read as alluding to the at times arbitrary, quixotic nature of whom God favors, and to the dangers entailed in mystical ascent. After all, we know that, among those who dare to approach the “inner sanctum” of the Divine, some go crazy, some die of fright, some turn heretic, and only a few “go in peace and come out in peace,” like Rabbi Akiva. Or again, perhaps the rich detail describing the king’s outer chamber and his inner chamber be read in terms of Rambam’s elaborate parable of this near the end of the Guide.

Can any of the readers out there help me? Does anyone know of a commentary on the Megillah which systematically works through all those places where the word Hamelekh is used, from this light?

Some Afterthoughts on Purim

Last week we spoke about the carnival aspect of Purim, with its mystical and theological meanings. I would now like to elaborate upon the more serious side of Purim. (Properly speaking, this is actually the central message of Shabbat Zakhor, the Shabbat prior to Purim; that Shabbat is dedicated to the remembering of Amalek and the commandment to “eradicate his memory from under the face of heaven” -- a problematic issue in its own right, which I would call “coping with the ‘battered people’ syndrome.”)

The historical significance of Purim is deeply rooted in the painful side of Jewish history: the reality or threat of virulent anti-semitism, as represented by the threat of destruction posed by Haman. Jews, living as (at times barely) tolerated aliens, and periodically suffering persecutions and pogroms, in the countries where they lived, whether in Europe, the Mediterranean countries, or in the Middle East, could easily identify with the story told in the megillah. This doubtless accounts for the great appeal of Purim, which was elevated to a quasi-Yom Tov status. Whatever may or may not have been the reality of the Purim story in ancient Persia, it spoke to a very profound place in the Jewish historical psyche. Precisely because this reality was so frightening, representing the darkest, most serious existential threat, the hilarity and drunkenness of Purim developed as a way of coping psychologically.

On a certain level, Purim may be viewed as the flip side of Tisha b’Av (the day of fasting and mourning for the destruction of the Temple, in mid-summer); in a certain sense, these two diametrically opposed days may be read as two reactions to the same awful bind. Purim, as we noted earlier, is a holiday of hullin, of pure secularity. It reflects the absence or concealment of Gods’ face, in which history is seemingly conducted in a blind, meaningless way, by a collection of clowns, buffoons and worse: be they lecherous, drunken fools or ego-driven, murderous villains.

But whereas Purim has a “happy end,” and celebrates the Divine Providence behind this facade, Tisha B’Av bemoans the tragic events that result from this hester panim, expressing a stark awareness of this negative side of Jewish destiny. The Rav often spoke of Tisha B’Av as day when one could challenge God with the most impudent, radical, “heretical” questions: “How, O God, could you allow this to happen?” He saw the motto of the day as “You have covered yourself with a cloud, so that no prayer can pass through” (Lam 3:44): again, Divine silence and deafness. More on this at the proper time.

The contrapuntal parallels between the two, if one may use such a phrase, are many. Two contrasting phrases are used to characterize the months in which they occur: “Once Adar enters, joy increases …”; “Once Av enters, joy is decreased…” During the reading of the megillah, the melancholy melody of the book of Eikhah (Lamentations) is used for certain verses alluding to the destruction of the Temple or to the impending doom facing the Jews of Shushan, setting off dramatically the light-hearted melody of the megillah. Likewise, hester panim, which is such a central theme of Tisha B’Av, also appears on Purim in the famous pun on Esther’s name (see last week’s Hitzei).

2. Another insight on the theme of the secular character of Purim relates to the laws of the megillah. In contrast to the writing of a Torah scroll—or tefillin, or even a mezuzah—the laws governing the actual making of the megillah are extremely lenient. There is no need to prepare the parchment from the animal hide lishmah, i.e., with specific intention that it be used for a sacred purpose; nor need the actual act of writing be done for the sake of the mitzvah: it is enough that it not be written by a Gentile or an apikoris. Even the manner of stitching the different sections of the scroll together is far less thorough and complete than in the case of a Sefer Torah. All this adds up to a lower level of sanctity: a megilla is not a sacred object, but only a “mitzvah object,” having a lower formal status.

3. At times, real historical events intrude upon the theological or mythical realm. Those of us who have lived in Israel for a while can remember quite a few Purims which seemed overshadowed by actual events. Two Purims in the early 1980’s were marred by the funerals of Torah greats, attended by tens of thousands of Jews: both Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Zvi Yehudah Kook, ztz”l, were buried on Shushan Purim in Jerusalem. Purim 1992 marked the conclusion of the Gulf War, that strange conflict in which the proud and powerful Israeli Army was forced by political constraints into total passivity (echoes of Galut?). For many Jerusalemites, the reading of the megillah was the first occasion in a month and a half when we were able to leave our homes without the omnipresent gas masks. Then there was the awful Purim of 1994, when a Hebron settler named Baruch Goldstein decided to act out his own Purimspeil of retribution of the Jews against their (supposed) enemies.

This year [2000], the juxtaposition of Purim with Pope John Paul II’s pilgrimage to the “Holy Land” adds a strange tone to the holiday. The living symbol of that institution which has, over the past two millennia, symbolized more than any other anti-semitism and the making of the Jew into a mythical pariah figure (ironically, Ahasuerus is one of the names of the Wandering Jew in medieval Christian legend), is a guest in the State of the Jews. He visits its president in his official mansion (he doesn’t know what an old buffoon the man is!); stands in tearful silence at Yad Vashem; inserts a kvitel in the Kotel asking forgiveness from the God of Abraham… Surely, this event, too, runs counter to the stereotypes as to how things are supposed to go according to the Purim script. No ones quite knows how to react. The Haredim and ultra-nationalists shout “Gevalt!”; the secularists fall over themselves to say how wonderful he is—so much nicer and more dignified than that nasty rabbi in Har Nof with the fancy robes. As usual in human affairs, the truth falls somewhere in the middle.

4. Re: my comment last week about Ahasuerus’s decree at the end of Chapter 1 that all the women should respect their husbands. One of the few sober moments at our Purim seudah involved a discussion about the final phrase of this chapter: “that every man should rule in his own house, and speak in the language of his people” (umedaber bilshon amo; 1:22). Rashi explains this enigmatic phrase by saying that “the wives are compelled to speak in the language of their husbands.” One of the significant areas in which a husband may assert his dominance is by insisting that the language of the home be his language, and not that of his wife. Such a decree only makes sense in a setting in which there were in fact a large number of inter-lingual marriages: that is, a multi-ethnic empire with much intermarriage, resulting either from migration from place to place, or from the presence of large numbers of military and bureaucratic personnel stationed in the provinces (reminiscent of the heyday of the British empire) who married local women (more like the Arabs in North Africa etc. during the Moslem conquests). (Actually, this is a bit strange: the reality familiar to us from the twentieth century is that immigrants tend to marry their own people, at least in the first generation; intermarriage usually occurs once the children or grandchildren of the “greenhorns” grow up feeling more comfortable in the new language; viz. the Jews, Italians, Greeks, Poles, Scandinavians, etc. etc. in America; the various ethnic groups among the Jews in Israel; and so on.) And indeed, one of the leif motifs of the megillah is the phrase, used each time a royal missal is sent, “to each state according to its writing; and to each people according to their speech” (1:22; 3:12; 8:9)—that is, in all of the written and spoken languages. The question is: if there were so many different groups, why did the fact that the Jews had their own customs bother so, not only Haman, but those who responded to his call? Food for thought (while you’re thinking about it, take another hamantasch ….)

5. About the “obligation” to drink on Purim: alongside those Hasidic homilies which find mystical meaning in the “altered consciousness” of Purim, there is a more sober strand in halakhah, which essentially rejects the idea of drunkenness even on Purim, being ever wary of the dangers involved in the excesses of a carnival-like atmosphere. This approach sees Purim as a week day with certain mitzvot, one of which is feasting (with just enough wine to make you drowsy—so that while discretely napping at the table one doesn’t know the difference between Haman and Mordecai; Sh. A., Orah Hayyim 695.2, Ram”a citing Maharil). If you will, a form of “sober drunkenness,” befitting the gravity of a God-fearing Jew. Indeed, Maimonides repeatedly draws a distinction between “frivolity and light-headedness” (holelut vekalut rosh) and true simhah, which he equates with the quiet, steadily joyous attitude felt in the service of God (Yom Tov 6:17-22, esp. 20; Lulav 8:14-15). In the case of Purim, he especially emphasizes the ethical moment of rejoicing the poor and misfortunate, which he interprets as an act of imitatio dei (Megilah 2:16-17)

An alternative reading would say that every human potentiality—even frivolity and silliness—has its role in the Divine scheme of things. While, doubtless, the rejoicing we are commanded on the other festivals is intertwined with seriousness and dignity and piety and awareness of the telos of life, the ”secular” nature of the days of Purim actually calls for a certain frivolity. Maybe one can speak of a kind of sacred kalut rosh as in irony, a mocking of the negative things in life, including the pomposity and pretentiousness and self-importance that too often accompany—or should one say, substitute for—true piety. (See Rav Adin Steinsaltz’s discussion of the four negative elements in the soul, including the “airy” element of frivolity, in his Biur Tanya, I:59-60).

An Afterword on Purim

I don’t know how much historical facticity there is to the Megillah. More than a few historians and Bible critics have suggest that it is more fiction than anything else, a stylized court romance or farce, noting that there is little or no external corroboration for the basic events recorded there. To me, the more significant point is that the Megillah story is an archetypal event, containing truth on several levels: theological, Jewish-historical, and human.

Theologically: the idea of God acting in human affairs in a hidden way, behind the curtain of the banal and mean actions and motivations of the human players. This message is repeated over and over again by midrashim, Hasidic interpretations, etc. In that respect, it is an interesting counterpoint to Pesah, observed exactly one month later, in which we celebrate the open manifestations of God’s might as revealed in the Exodus.

Jewish historical: Purim is the archetypal tale of Jewish life in Exile—of powerlessness, of vulnerability to the changing, arbitrary whims of Gentile leaders, and of the ever present danger of the unexpected rise to power and influence of an anti-Semitic fanatic of the likes of Haman. The tale of Jews like Mordecai working behind the scenes, engaging in shtadlanut, “intercession” with the powers-that-be, to treat their community favorably. What struck me, reading the Megillah this year, was how everything takes place through the mediacy of the king; the two sides, Haman and Mordecai/Esther, are constantly jockeying to achieve their ends through influence on him. This may be seen in the Megillah through any number of literary parallels between actions taken by Ahasuerus on behalf of Haman, and those taken later at the behest of Mordecai and Esther, down to the hasty sending out of horseback messengers bearing royal letters. The king himself is seen as an utterly fickle, arbitrary fool, moved as much or more by the promptings of his lower instincts than by any rational intelligence or statesmanlike considerations.

Re Exilic powerlessness: Zionism inscribed on its banner the idea of altering the manner in which Jews function in the world by becoming masters of our own destiny, self-reliant rather than dependent on others. Yet one can’t help noting the parallel between the situation of Israel in both the previous and present Gulf War to the classical situation of the Diaspora Jew. I am not generally one given to seeking out signs and omens, but I can’t avoid noting the strange coincidence of both gulf wars with Purim: the ’91 war ended precisely on the eve of [Shushan] Purim, and this one began at its conclusion. But although Saddam may make a suitable Haman, the Bushes are far too sober, earnest and convinced of their own absolute righteousness to make a good Ahasuerus (not to mention Blair, who seems like a rather over-eager school boy), while Sharon is certainly miscast as Mordecai, lacking alike in wisdom, piety and menshlichkeit.

Human: What I see at the very heart of the Megillah is the farcical nature of human actions. The Megillah, more than anything else, may be read as an exposition on the basic human vices listed by R. Eliezer ha-Kapar in Avot 4.28: kinah, ta’avah and kavod: jealousy, lust, and honor. The king seems to spend almost all of his time seeing to his bodily appetites: banqueting all day long, and sampling a different virgin in bed each night. When he does open his mouth, he looks a fool, beginning with his edict in 1:20-22 that every man should be lord and master in his own home (as if one could really legislate something like that), to his mistaking, in 7:8, a desperate man’s plea for his life for a brazen, clumsy attempt at seduction of the most powerful woman in the kingdom. As for Haman: he is moved, not so much by desire for either pleasure or wealth, or even power, as by an insatiable desire for honor. His anger against the Jews begins after Mordecai refuses to bow down to him (there is something emblematic here about the origins and nature of anti-Semitism: the inability to accept difference rooted in a quiet dignity born of faith); he spends his time at home boasting of his importance and honors to his family and intimates (5:10-12); but, despite all his honors, ”All this is worthless to me” so long as he sees Mordecai (5:13). When summoned to the king in 6:5-6 and asked to suggest a suitable ceremony of honor for someone deserving, his first thought is “Who could the king possibly wish to honor more than me?” It is this obsession with honor that gives birth to his insane, murderous jealousy, and to his ultimate downfall.

As for us: there is also something in Purim of the fantasy of the powerless: “those bastards get it in the end.” It is a moment of comfort within an existence in a life that continues to be insecure, filled with crisis. But underlying it is a pessimistic view of the world; the awareness that it is a place in which human beings are prone to behaving in ugly, mean, and vicious ways. Again, a stark contrast to the overwhelming, miraculous redemption of Passover. As Hartman put it recently: you laugh so as not to cry.