The world has suddenly been divided into two groups: the Blue and Blacks and the Red and Whites. 

The BBs and the RWs are screaming at each other in shuls, in delis, and JCCs across the globe. The cause of the great debate? Hamantaschen.

Some say that the difference is only a matter of poor lighting, but I say that for Jews at Purim, there is always plenty of light, happiness and honor.

Happy Purim.

Today is Purim Katan, literally, "Little Purim." It is a very minor holiday that occurs only in seven of every nineteen years (during a Hebrew Calendar "leap year" when the month of Adar is repeated). There are no mitzvot associated with this day, only the suggestion that one should be happy. That is my kind of a holiday.

A month from today, we will be celebrating the full holiday of Purim in the second of this year's two Adars. On that day, we will read the story of Esther, deliver portions of food to our neighbors and make gifts to the poor. (Okay, that's my kind of holiday, too). 

In celebration of Purim Katan, write a comment for this post of no more than five words that gives a reason why you are happy today.

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

Today, Sunday, our religious school had its annual Purim carnival. This is a mainstay of many congregations at Purim. The youth group organizes games and other entertainment for the younger kids and charges admission or a fee for each game. It is a fundraiser for the youth group that helps them pay for their programs and trips throughout the year.

I agreed to participate in this year's carnival by helping with a game in which kids throw shaving cream pies at Haman. And, yes, my job was to be Haman.  There's a video clip above to attest to the indignity of it all. 

(By the way, I was joking about "fifty bucks a throw." It was actually three dollars. This booth raised about $120 for our youth group. Not bad.)

I know that there were at least a few parents watching today who wondered, "Is it right that our rabbi should be doing this? What does it teach our kids that they can throw shaving cream pies at the rabbi—even in the spirit of Purim merriment?" Well, I have to admit that I thought about that, too.

There actually is a discussion in traditional Jewish law about this question. Are there activities that should be considered beneath the dignity of a rabbi? 

The proof text that generally is used in this discussion comes from the book of Samuel. When King David brought the Ark of the Covenant to the City of David, there was a boisterous celebration with dancing, shouting, music and shofar blasts (II Samuel 6). When David's wife, Michal, saw her husband "leaping and whirling," she despised him for it. Michal was born a princess, the daughter of King Saul. She felt that to behave as David did was beneath the dignity of the successor to her father's throne. 

When David came home, Michal gave him what for. She spoke sarcastically to him: "How well did the King of Israel honor himself today by exposing himself to the eyes of his subjects' slave girls in the way that one of the riffraff might expose himself!" (II Samuel 6:20). 

David answered by telling Michal that he danced with the Ark in order to serve God. "I will dance before Adonai and dishonor myself even more and I shall bring myself low in my own eyes; but among the slave girls of whom you speak, I shall be honored" (II Samuel 6:21-22).

The Bible clearly has a negative view of Michal's reproach. It states that because of this incident she never gave birth. David, on the other hand, is viewed positively for his willingness to subvert his own dignity for the sake of honoring God. David knew that by lowering himself before God, he actually lifted up the way he was perceived. From this, Jewish legal scholars conclude that the dignity of a leader, such as a rabbi, is not compromised when his or her actions are seen as the fulfillment of God's commandments (See, for example, Bei'ur Halachah, Siman 250). 

Now, I don't bring this up in order to say that I was as righteous as Kind David, or to suggest that I acted today to raise my prestige in the eyes of our congregation. The point I want to make is a more global statement about Judaism, rabbis, dignity and joy.

I want Jewish children to know that Judaism wants us to experience the leaping joy of the human heart. I think a rabbi can sacrifice a bit of his or her dignity if it helps to show children (and the child in all of us) that Judaism is more interested in celebrating God with ecstatic joy than it is in the solemn dignity of human beings.

Rabbis (including myself) can be a pretty stuck-up bunch. We display ourselves as spiritual exemplars and we believe that our behavior sets the standard for the community. We are mindful that the way we are perceived shapes the way that the Jewish people as a whole are perceived. I believe that all of this is right. Rabbis should live in awe of the responsibility to act accordingly.

Yet, there also is a need to lighten up a bit. If awe and dignity are all that people see in rabbis, they will assume that this is all there is to Judaism. We owe them so much more. A rabbi also has to be an exemplar of life lived with joy. What better opportunity is there for doing that than Purim? 

Celebrate God by living outrageously, proudly and joyfully. Live with dignity, yes, but never forget that the purpose of dignity is not to aggrandize ourselves. Dignity is a good thing only to the extent that it helps us remember that our lives matter. We live every moment in the presence of an awesome God.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Counting from Freedom to Covenant: Nobility