Purim, the one day we get drunk enough to tell the truth about God

In New Orleans, Mardi Gras is a time to laissez les bon temps rouler or “let the good times roll.” Carnaval in Rio is lindo maravilhoso – beautiful, marvelous! And for Jews at Purim – our inebriated, gender-bent, springtime bacchanal – everything is nahfokh hu, “all upside down.”

On this day of boozy anarchy, no authority is too sacred to be mocked. Even holy books are fair game, as Jews parody religious wisdom with “Purim Torah.” But let me kick it up a notch, and in the carnival spirit, offer some blasphemy. The Megillah is more than just a laugh, it’s sacrilegious satire. Tradition says we should get too drunk to distinguish between Mordechai and Haman, but as transgression goes, that’s child’s play. The deep secret is that Purim mocks God.

In Megillat Esther, the Master of the World wears the surprisingly well-fitting costume of Achashverosh, a clueless despot, ruling an upside-down empire. Like other carnivals that allow the common people to thumb their noses at authority, at Purim, we mock the King of Kings for His delusions of grandeur and shake our fists at all the world’s twistedness.

On Purim, I’m sure God can take the joke. Well, I’m pretty sure. At least, I hope so.

This satirical move inverts the common rabbinic maneuver of comparing God to a “king of flesh and blood.” Usually, God is portrayed as a wise ruler. [“Like a king who protected a city and fed its citizens…”] Sometimes, the Melekh Elyon, the heavenly exemplar, is contrasted with the melekh evyon, the poor earthly substitute, to show how magnificent God is. [“A king of flesh and blood lives today and dies tomorrow, but the King of Kings…”]

Megillat Esther’s carnivalesque mockery succeeds because, on at least one day of the year, we admit that the Melekh Elyon resembles the melekh evyon. To imitate the classic midrashic style, I would phrase it like this: “To what can God be compared? To a king of flesh and blood, feckless, capricious, ignorant, dissolute, and vain, rewarding villains, ignoring friends, and blithely authorizing his subjects’ mass murder.”

Most of the year, we devoted Jews genuinely love God with all our hearts. One day a year, though, we get drunk enough to tell the truth: our world, under its divine ruler, often uncomfortably resembles Shushan under its royal buffoon.

Hiding in plain sight

And what sort of warped world does the Megillah portray, ruled by what sort of fool? Even before uncovering the irreverent satire within, the dark comic sex farce of Esther is a biblical oddity. It’s the tale of a despot who auditions prospective queens by inviting Persia’s hottest virgins for “overnight tryouts.” And, barukh Hashem, a crypto-Jewish maidel wins the golden scepter! (We teach this to our daughters?) Plus, she comes from such a proud Jewish family: our heroes are so assimilated they bear the names of pagan gods, Marduk and Ishtar.

But naughty comedy becomes sacrilegiously daring in the Megillah’s best-known feature: it is the only biblical book that never mentions God. Does that make Esther a secular work, freed at last from onerous commandments and tiresome preaching? Or is the Megillah covertly pious, its happy ending proving that divine providence may be veiled but always works things out for the best?

Actually, I think the unmentioned God is hiding in plain sight throughout the book. Although Megillat Esther does not invoke “Adonai” or “Elohim” even once, the word melekh – king – appears nearly 200 times. Look closely and you’ll recognize the melekh lurking behind the barely veiled parallels between King and king.

First, Achashverosh rules a vast empire “from India to Africa,” as God rules “from the rising of the sun to its setting.” Next, Achashverosh lives in the birah, a term the Bible applies only to the Persian palace and the Jerusalem Temple, both magnificent abodes built of marble, gold, and silver, decked in blue and purple.

It’s not only their location that makes the comparison, but also how the rulers treat their people. In the salacious Talmudic legend [Megillah 12b], the king, in his cups, orders Vashti to appear nude before his frat bros. Now, that seems like conduct unbecoming a king. But the prophet Hoshea [2.5] imagines a furious God stripping bare Israel, His covenanted wife, for her faithlessness. Perhaps King and king share some capacity for cruelty.

And there are further similarities. As we know, Achashverosh likes the ladies. His girlfriends prepare for sleepovers by bathing for six months each in “oils of myrrh and spices,” the very terms used for incense in the Temple service. Seems the King and the king favor the same perfumes.

And neither the King nor the king can be counted on to dispense justice. The tyrant of Shushan rewards Haman with the royal ring and ignores Mordecai, who saved his life. Will the judge of all Persia not do justice?

‘All who are seduced by wine’

I’m not the first to blur the lines between king and King, as in this striking Talmudic passage [Megillah 15b] about the turning point in the story: “That night, the king’s sleep was disturbed [6.1].” Which insomniac ruler is this? “The Cosmic King,” of course.

Rashi, the most traditional of readers, here offers a daring interpretation of this newly woken God, citing Psalms 78.65: “God rouses as from sleep, like a warrior shaking off wine.” By suggesting Hashem needed to sober up to avert disaster, Rashi sharpens both the Talmud’s reverence for divine power and its sarcasm at divine fickleness. God and Achashverosh both need a hot coffee and a cold shower to clear their heads and notice the horrible crime unfolding before their very eyes.

It may seem impious to call God a boozer. Yet the Talmud [Eruvin 65a] imagines that Hashem is not only the supreme lawgiver, He is also a God you could have a beer with. After all, God is only human. “Said Rabbi Hanina: All who are seduced by wine have a little bit of the divine in them, as it is said: And the Lord smelled the sweet aroma” of Noah’s offering [Genesis 8:21]. Korbanot or cognac can be hard to resist, for King and for king.

How can a Jew live in a Shushan world that’s so ugly, absurd, and unfair? At its worst, life can make you despair, like the ancient apostate Elisha ben Avuya, who said, “There is neither justice nor judge.”

But that’s not my approach at all. Every other day of the year, Judaism teaches us to behave in keeping with the spirituality, ethics and holiness in the world. But if – no matter what terrible things happen – we invariably celebrate God’s wisdom, power, and goodness, where would we find the resources to contend with life’s inanity, insanity, and cruelty? Thank heaven for snarky little Purim, cracking wise behind God’s back. An annual day of blasphemy deepens Judaism’s religious repertoire by making it that much more honest to God.

So, celebrate Purim with a healthy dose of transgressive humor, seeking order but mocking chaos, keeping whatever faith you have left, and having fun.

Even when the world seems hellish, it’s not satanic. Instead, I would sum up the irreverent and satiric Megillat Esther with the dark poetry of the songwriter Tom Waits, from Heartattack & Vine, his 1980 tour through the Los Angeles gutter:

“You know there ain’t no devil. That’s just God when He’s drunk.”