This oddity is the result of a minor detail of the story of Purim in the Book of Esther. According to the story, Haman connived to have the Jews of Persia destroyed on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar. However, after his plot was revealed by Mordechai and Esther, the king ordered the execution of Haman and issued a new decree allowing the Jews to defend themselves on that day. Not surprisingly, the Jews succeeded in overcoming their enemies. (How many people are going to join a fight against the Jews when their chief enemy and his ten sons have just been hanged in the capital?)

Queen Esther then instituted the holiday of Purim for the day after the Jews were permitted to defend themselves. It is an important distinction for the holiday. Purim does not celebrate a military triumph. It celebrates the day of "rejoicing and feasting" that followed. That is why Purim is on the fourteenth day of Adar, not the thirteenth. 

However, the text tells us that in the capital city of Shushan, the King permitted the Jews to defend themselves for an additional day. They fought against their enemies on both the thirteenth and fourteenth of Adar. The book of Esther is careful to explain, therefore, that Purim could not be celebrated in Shushan until the fifteenth day. On that day, the Jews of the capital would follow the Jews of the "unwalled towns" of the kingdom by "sending gifts to each other"  (Esther 9:12-19). 

This is the reason that Purim still is celebrated a day late in Shushan and in Jerusalem, whose walls were standing back in the days of Joshua. Today is the day that Jews in Jerusalem read the Megillah with its blessings and deliver mishloach manot, gifts of food, to their friends.

For people today who are concerned with reviving and reinvigorating the joy of Judaism, Shushan Purim has an important lesson. We must be careful to be clear about why we are celebrating. We change the date of a holiday to avoid even the appearance that we are celebrating the downfall of our foes. 

Real joy is not about triumphalism. We do not rejoice over the death of Haman. We do not celebrate by firing our weapons into the air. Rather, our best celebrations are always about gratitude. We wait a day after our temporal victory and rejoice, instead, over the miracle of an unseen presence who delivers us and guides us. We celebrate by laying down our weapons and taking a bag of cookies over to our neighbors' homes. 

That is something to be joyful about.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Imagine There's No Haman
Purim: Who Knows?

This is a strange commandment. We are obliged to remember to blot out the memory of Amalek. How do you do that? How does a person remember to forget?

It's helpful to understand the symbolic meaning of the nation called Amalek in this passage, and the relationship of Amalek to the holiday of Purim. 

Later Jewish tradition imagined Amalek as the eternal enemy of Israel that would appear in various guises throughout history. In the book of Exodus, we are taught that "Adonai will have war with Amalek from generation to generation" (Exodus 17:16). Amalek is not just a nation that fought treacherously against Israel once-upon-a-time, during the travel through the wilderness. They are the embodiment of enmity against God that is unending. Amalek is the undying human capacity for evil.

Now, evil is a particularly difficult problem for Judaism as a strictly monotheistic tradition. If there is one God, who is the master and creator of everything, how can there be a separate power in the universe that is in opposition to God? The classical Jewish answer—that evil is not a separate force, but is only the shadow of God's absence—cannot answer our darkest questions adequately. How is it that deeply malevolent, actively destructive evil can exist in a universe that is ruled solely by a benevolent and all-powerful God?

This is not an idle or hypothetical question for Judaism and for Jews. The Jewish people, who most strenuously insist on God's unity, are also the people whose history most clearly declares the reality of evil.  Throughout our generations, we have been victims of schemes and plots that originate in the darkest and most hateful recesses of the human psyche.

Haman, the villain of the Purim story, is viewed as the representative of Amalek in the time of the Persian Empire. He is known in the book of Esther as "Haman the Agagite," and so he bears the name of King Agag, the Amalekite ruler who was defeated by King Saul (I Samuel 15:7-9). The entire holiday of Purim can be viewed as a way to fulfill the commandment to remember to "blot out the memory of Amalek." We remember that the evil of Haman exists in the world—an evil that would wipe us out for no reason and without mercy—and then we blot that memory out with laughter, drink, joy and noisy groggers. 

There is a tradition, on Purim, of writing the name of Amalek in chalk on the bottom of ones shoes. That way, as we parade around on the holiday, we are also wiping away the name with each festive footfall. Another tradition associated with destroying the name of Amalek is practiced by Jewish ritual scribes. A sofer will test his of her quill for writing a Torah scroll, a mezuzah or tefilin by first writing the name of Amalek and then crossing it out. 

But why the paradox? If we should always remember Amalek, why should we also strive to forget? Why should we drive the name from memory? I believe the teaching to be a reflection of the paradox that evil itself represents in Jewish tradition.

We cannot deny evil. We may want to believe in a God who is present in all things—in our sorrow as much in our joy—but we cannot escape that we live in a universe that includes things that are beyond our ability to reconcile with God. Judaism is too realistic to just brush aside evil as a mere illusion. We are bound to remember it. 

Yet, we also are given a tool to drive it away. Evil cannot be fought by filling our minds with equal measures of hatred and anger. When we try to fight evil with evil, we only add to the evil present in our world. We would only multiply the denial of God and God's Torah that Amalek represents. We must forever oppose evil, yes, but we also must have the courage to engage in constructive forgetfulness. 

When we choose to live our lives with joy, despite evil, we help to destroy evil. When we know our hurtful past, and yet live as though it had no hold on us, we defeat it. On Purim, we are asked to behave (perhaps with the aid of a drink or two) as if there were no difference between "Cursed be Haman" and "Blessed be Mordechai." The idea is not to deny the existence of the evil represented by Haman the Agagite, but to defeat the power of evil by looking beyond it to the true power behind creation.

That is what we must remember. Remember to wipe out the memory of evil from your consciousness, and allow yourself to connect instead to the source of life.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Darkness
Tough Times
Ki Tetze: The Bird's Nest and the World Trade Center

I've studied and taught Esther dozens of times before. I don't think I said anything very different about the book tonight than what I have said in the past. I focused on the way the book portrays God's presence hiding in the shadows of our lives, sometimes barely noticeable, but always there. I talked about the two competing visions of reality portrayed in the book—a world that is random and meaningless versus a world that is purposeful and ruled by a moral order. I presented the book as a lesson about how the world is the opposite of how it sometimes appears to us.

The thing that was different about tonight's study was not the teacher. It was the class. I was humbled by the way the participants so warmly and openly embraced a stranger, someone from outside of their faith, who came to teach a text that they consider to be part of their own sacred canon. 

In fact, they did more than that. They gleefully used the groggers I brought to class. They had as much fun twirling them as any group of Hebrew school children I have ever seen. They pored over the Hebrew scroll of Esther I brought and treated it as an object of great sanctity.

Yes, I can imagine a synagogue welcoming a Christian teacher with as much enthusiasm as I received tonight. Yet, there is something special in the experience of being the one who is so  welcomed. I am grateful for the kindness of my new friends at St. Joseph Catholic Church of Stuart. 

The book of Esther, after all, does teach us that appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes, we discover that there is a deeper truth that underlies the masks we wear through life. Tonight, I learned again that where people expect to see only differences, there can be great commonality. Conventional expectations were inverted tonight in a way that reminds me of the way the terror of destruction in the book of Esther was transformed for the Jews of Shushan into "light, gladness and honor" (Esther 8:16).

It is an honor, indeed, to witness the shining of that light.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Tetzaveh: Games of Chance
Purim: Who Knows?
Nine Students, a Baby and a Wedding