What is Purim really about?

I’ve known many people who dislike the holiday of Purim. They object to the glorification of violence at the end of the Megillah, where in Chapter 9, verse 5, we read, “And the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and with slaughter and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them.” They are uneasy about the raucous, uninhibited nature of the holiday, which seems to be a pure expression of what Freud called the “id”, expressing our hungers without any check. When we mask ourselves, appearing as something we are not – or revealing some aspect of ourselves we don’t usually show – it seems too much like lying.

But Jewish tradition has seen this transgressive holiday, which encourages us to drink

until we cannot tell the difference between the villain and the hero, as deeply connected to Yom Kippur, our most sacred observance of repentance. An anonymous article on the website My Jewish Learning sums it up very well: “The Talmud makes clear that most Jewish holidays are about honoring God and following divine commandments, but they are also about pleasure, feasting and celebrating. […] Purim and Yom Kippur are the outliers, each taking one aspect of holiday observance to an extreme. Yom Kippur is about forgoing all bodily needs and pleasures (food, sex, etc.) to achieve spiritual elevation. Purim lunges wildly in the opposite direction, giving license to take feasting and merriment to their extreme […] Both, in Jewish thought, are important paths to spirituality and divine service. The Jewish experience would be incomplete without either one.”

The Zohar, the great mystical book of Kabbalism, reads Yom Kipurim – Day of Atonement – as Yom KaPurim – Day like Purim. What do the two holy days have in common? Rabbi Yaakov Medan writes, “The Zohar sees a similarity between Esther – who, on the day when the Jews of Shushan fasted, entered the inner courtyard of the king – and the High Priest – who, on the fast of Yom Kippur, enters the Holy of Holies.” Also, the casting of lots – purim -- features in both stories. Haman casts lots to see when he will destroy the Jews, while the High Priest casts lots to decide which goat will be sacrificed, and which sent of the Azazel carrying the

sins of the Jewish people on its back.

Yom Kippur and Purim are also the only two holidays the rabbis think we will observe after the coming of the Messiah. As My Jewish Learning sums up the midrash, “[We] will not need Passover to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt because [we] will be eternally free. [We] will not need Tisha B’Av to commemorate the tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people

because there will be no more tragedies. [We] will not even need Shabbat, the sacred day of rest and arguably the most important holiday, because all days will be restful. Indeed, Shabbat is considered a foretaste of the World to Come. However, says the midrash, there are two holidays the Jewish people will retain even in the messianic era: Yom Kippur and Purim, days of pure spirituality and pure physicality.”

Most religious traditions include both days of fasting and of feasting, of restriction and of abandon. Often, one is preparation for the other; in one example, Christians celebrate Mardigras before entering Lent, just as we go wild at Purim before getting ready to enter “Mitzraim” (the narrow places -- our word for Egypt) and go into the wilderness with our dry, unleavened bread in order to find our freedom. The id needs a place to let loose – so that it does not become the ruler of our lives. A life of pure abandonment – grabbing at everything we can get in the material world – is no more suitable than a life of pure abstinence. (Judaism, in particular, rejects the latter. There are no Jewish monks, and celibacy is seen as a sin.)

I look forward to exploring and celebrating Purim with you this year. Certainly we see a lot of people giving in to their id these days – and that leads to nothing good! However, in these

extraordinarily difficult times, we can all benefit from letting our impulses run rampant for a day. Then we can gather ourselves together for the march in the wilderness toward freedom.