A slightly different Purim for a very different year
As Purim approaches, I’ve heard more people than ever before saying they don’t know how they can possibly celebrate the holiday joyously. Some look at the devastation of October 7 and the precarious fate of the hostages still in Gaza and find it unimaginable to celebrate a story about the deliverance of the Jewish people from destruction when our current fate seems so uncertain. Others see the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza and find it too painful to valorize the Book of Esther’s description of Jews killing over 75,000 Persians (Book of Esther, Chapter 9). And still others worry about American Jews’ recent reversal of fortune, which The Atlantic recently eulogized as “the ending” of a Golden Age, and find it impossible to relate to a turning of tides in the opposite direction for another diasporic community.
If you are finding it difficult to connect to Purim’s exuberance for these reasons or any others, you’re in good company. More than 1,500 years ago, Rava, one of the most prominent sages of the Talmud, also had a very hard time with Purim. As I’ve explained elsewhere, he thought that in the Book of Esther — the story that defines the holiday — Mordechai wrongly refused to bow to his rival in the king’s court, Haman, and therefore endangered all of Persia’s Jews unnecessarily, all the while pretending to act piously. While Esther’s heroism eventually saves the Jewish people, Mordechai’s hypocrisy colors the entire story and holiday.
You might think that Rava therefore didn’t celebrate the holiday of Purim. And in ways, you’d be right. He thought that the joyous prayer of Hallel recited on most Jewish holidays shouldn’t be recited on Purim not because reading the Book of Esther is joyous enough on its own or because the story took place outside of the land of Israel, as other Talmudic sages argued, but rather because, unlike on other holidays, the salvation of the Jewish people was not so clear cut (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 14a). He also instituted the practice of drinking alcohol on Purim not to add to feelings of joviality, but rather to help people lower their cognitive and emotional defenses around assuming Mordechai was a hero so that they could see the uncomfortable reality more clearly.
But you’d be mistaken to think that Rava didn’t celebrate Purim at all. Not only did he celebrate the holiday; he even went so far as to say that the Jews in the Book of Esther were the first generation to accept the Torah fully consensually (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 88a). How could this be? How did Rava see the Book of Esther as both a story of the deep hypocrisies and failures of Jewish leadership and also a story of truly embracing Torah?
I believe these understandings are deeply intertwined. For Rava, Purim is a day on which we celebrate the Jewish people’s ability to see beyond the faces of hypocrisy and self-interest and to connect to the Torah and infinite source of life that have nourished us for thousands of years.
The capacity to love something beautiful when those who speak most loudly in its name are distasteful is one of the greatest challenges of our time. We live in an era when too many of our leaders from all walks of life are, to borrow the recent words of an IDF general, not “worthy of us.” A common response has been to throw out the baby with the bath water: compassion for Palestinians is rejected because of genocidal Palestinian leaders; Zionism is abandoned because of self-interested and zealous Zionist politicians; Torah is avoided because of self-righteous and judgmental rabbis.
This year, we need Rava’s Purim more than ever. We need a holiday to remind us that when doing the sacred work of throwing out the proverbial tainted bathwater, not only can we keep the baby, but we must, for it is precisely what we need most in such difficult times. What does a Purim like this — one that focuses on the heart of what Torah is all about — look like in practice?
With some tweaks, very similar to the Purim that Rava inherited and that has been passed down until now. It is a day to tell the story of and discuss the Book of Esther, including its ethical and spiritual complexities, so that we can glean ancient wisdom for our contemporary lives: avoiding mistakes and emulating triumphs. It is a day to “send gifts to one another” (Book of Esther, 9:22) to both concretize and express gratitude for the bonds that form the communities that hold us. It is a day to give “presents to the poor” (Book of Esther, 9:22) to manifest a reality in which we care not only theoretically about, but also practically for those in need. And, yes, it is even a day of “feasting and merrymaking” (Book of Esther, 9:22) — not of frivolity and drunkenness, which are antithetical to Rava’s vision; and not because the entire story of Purim is happy, for it, like our contemporary reality, is not — because the ability to hold tightly to our deepest truths even when they are distorted by others is truly worth celebrating.
