Winter has neared its end. We have stayed indoors a good while longer than we would have wished. Days have been short, too short. While nights plunged us into an abyss, which even the sun cannot seem to dispel, we celebrate this time of Purim, the arrival of hope. Yes, many of the trees are still bare but before long we will find ourselves out of doors celebrating with the emergence of animal and plant life. An occasional cold wind may still blow but it’s harsh force has been taken away.
Purim tells the story of the release from the grip of a tyrant. Haman wanted to exterminate the Jews. He was bent, even to his own personal detriment, on the destruction of that, "certain people." It’s a frightening and realistic story, one that we have heard far too often.
The story of Esther also reveals a light, flippant side. We drink. More than we should. Synagogue decorum disappears. We smile, laugh and make fun of the whole story and ourselves by dressing up in costume, holding beauty pageants, parades shouting and banging our feet, hands and gragers whatever we hear the wicked name mentioned.
But the laughter is not all full-hearted, unrelieved joy. It is more through the laughter; one that comes not from the heart but from a dark foreboding. For such a bloody story, full of intrigue and ending in death, a wholesome purging laughter is not possible.
God seemingly has no role as we read the scroll of Esther. The Holy One’s name does not appear a single time. Instead, we find Queen Vashti being ordered to disrobe before the king and his cronies. She was to appear before him attired only in her crown. Naturally, Vashti she refuses and is deposed. A contest then ensues for the next royal consort.
From among all the eligible women in the kingdom, Esther is chosen. For months she prepares herself, preening, perfuming, bathing for the day when she will bed the king Achashverosh. All the while we are perplexed: the king is not Jewish. Doesn't anyone object? Where are the voices of dissent? There are none. Is she the sacrifice the Jewish people are willing to surrender for the sake of peace?
We read how Esther gathers her courage to confront King with her identity and the plot to kill her and the Jewish people. Is it a dangerous moment for her because she has been a Marrano, a hidden Jew, until now. No one, including Haman, suspects that Esther is Jewish. In fact, he lusts after Esther and tries to seduce her. Overcoming her fears, Esther confronts the king and saves her people. Then the bloodletting commences. Beginning with Haman, he is impaled. His sons are likewise put to death along with all the enemies wanting to wipe out the Jewish people. Seventy-five thousand in all!
No wonder God is absent from the bloody and bawdy tale of Esther. Purim is a holiday of excess; too much laughter, too much drinking, too many tall tales, too much blood and too many innuendos. The absence of God is dangerous. So the rabbis decreed the 14th of Adar as a day of listening to the Megilla being read once in the evening again in the morning, giving gifts to our friends into the needy (mishloach manot) and fasting before the holiday commences.
More: In preparing for Purim we read on the preceding Shabbat a special section called Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat of Memory. In the last aliya we recall the story of the evil Amalek, whose sole desire was to destroy the Jews in the time of Moses, as Haman would later imitate in his day. We recall the evil that has menaced us in the past. The story is not simply about Amalek and Haman; it’s about every despot who has taken it upon himself to read the earth of us.
Such ideas are not lightly dismissed. They make us introspective. As the Torah itself states, “The Lord will be at war with Amalek throughout all time.” How well we have learned this in the past century!
