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Taking Pleasure Seriously: Purim, from Trauma to SimchaMarch 2007From the Desk of Rabbi Cohon"Mishenichnas Adar marbimb'simcha - when you enter the month of Adar it's time for fun!"
Purim proves that, from time to time, even the Holy One, Blessed by God, loves to party. Like all the other springtime festivals--whether called Mardi Gras, Spring Fling, or Rodeo--Purim is a lot of fun, a great way to usher in the end of winter with a wild, over-the-top rambunctious celebration. Inhibitions are out, and revelry, for one night and day, is in. It’s as though we’ve been good for so long we need to let down our hair, change our clothes, and really celebrate. There is a nine-word summary of every Jewish festival from Chanukah through Pesach: they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat! On Purim we add--and drink. Pure, irresponsible fun, right? But there is also something more profound going on at Purim than just a good, unwholesome time. And it reveals important truths about us as a people, and each of us as individuals. There is a famous joke that says that on Purim we Jews dress up and pretend to be non-Jews--while on Yom Kippur we dress up and pretend to be Jews. That’s cynical but not accurate. On Yom Kippur we neither eat nor drink, we dress in the simplest possible color and manner--all in white, no leather or jewelry--we strive to be absolutely honest, and we open ourselves up completely both to God and to others. Exactly six months--half a year--later on Purim, we eat and drink to excess (the actual mitzvah is ad d’lo yada, until we cannot know reality clearly), we wear elaborate costumes and masks, and we hide our identities, and we pretend to be something we are not. My teacher, Professor Tamara Eskenazi, our recent
Bilgray Scholar and the editor of the upcoming Women’s Torah Commentary,
spoke beautifully here at But the actual characters of the Purim story are far from perfectly good. The fun, devil-may-care quality of the tale conceals a far from simple story. Beautiful, secretive Esther, and wise, manipulative, Mordechai are functioning in a world of political machinations and public spectacle. They are much like us: using and manipulating our Jewish identities to suit our own purposes, wearing masks when it suite us, sometimes pious but mostly practical. The Purim story takes place in a setting where the Jewish people are a minority among a non-Jewish majority culture. Sound familiar? These Jews are a successful minority, assimilated into the highest levels of society. Still familiar? Mordechai is a trusted advisor to the king himself. Jews may be a tiny minority, yet they function as national security advisors and senators, poets and playwrights, doctors and lawyers, business leaders and outspoken activists and quite next door neighbors. In a word they are secure. Then it all falls apart. That’s what Esther--and -Purim-is really all about. This is a stark assessment of life among a potentially malevolent dominant culture. We Jews do not, and must not, live in constant overt fear. But even when things are good there’s always a sense of nervousness and vigilance just beneath the surface of our lives. The dominant culture--so apparently benign--can suddenly give rise to deep threat with little warning, as in Chapter 3 of Esther, chronicling the rapid development of a “Final Solution” to the “Jewish problem” of society. It’s for that reason that the Trope, the cantillations we use as we chant the Megillah of Esther, often slip into the melody used for Eycha, Lamentations. Just like that, fun can slip into tragedy. It’s true on Purim, and of course it’s true in our own lives. So why do we laugh on Purim? We laugh because we American Jews are doing OK, or better. We laugh because we are, on the whole, safe, secure, and successful. Mostly we laugh because we can tell a funny story about the realities of life as a minority in the midst of a dominant culture. But it’s more complicated than that, isn’t it? Even as we laugh on Purim and dress in costume and eat and drink, at the very height of our revelry as we read the story, we know that our people have often been in desperate positions. And although we are enjoying our own American Jewish Golden Age we also know, at some level, that our success may not be permanent, and that our own identities are a complex mix of masks and costumes. On this coming Purim may we learn that our true identities need no masks, and that revelry need not reflect neurosis? And may we come to accept that even fun can teach us great truths about ourselves. L’shalom
v’reiut-in peace and friendship, and chag
sameach!
Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon
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