Purim 2024
Like Chanukah, Purim, which we will be celebrating on Sunday, celebrates triumph and salvation, yet Purim and Chanukah feel very different. On Chanukah we focus on the victory—really, the far aftermath of the victory —the lighting of candles and celebration of the rededication of the Temple. We do not read about the Greek threat or the wars of the Maccabees against the Greeks.
Purim is almost the opposite. It is named for the tragic, precarious, unexpected threat which we faced. We call the holiday Purim, “al shem ha’pur,” named for the lottery which Haman cast to exterminate us. On Purim, we do not only focus on salvation, but instead tell the whole story. The entire first half of the Megillah, of which we must hear every word, describes the genocidal plan and its development. Only then, exactly halfway through the megillah, do we see the hand of God’s salvation hidden beneath the story. Indeed, the phrase “Megillat Esther” means “to reveal the hidden.”
On the surface these two holidays are the same—they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat. So why the extreme difference between the ways we remember and celebrate them?
Perhaps the difference is that on Chanukah, according to the book of Maccabees, we were strong; we had an army and the ability to wage war. Judah Maccabee and his family and all the Jewish fighters were strategic and powerful and won many wars against the Seleucid Kings, following which they dedicated the Temple.
But there is something more precarious and existentially threatening about Purim and the sudden oblivion it engendered. On Purim we had no power to protect ourselves, no way to feel in control. Purim highlights the sudden and seemingly random nature of life and death. We believe in God, but Purim, especially the beginning of the megillah, begs the questions: Where is God? How does it all work? Where is the justice? Which is why it’s called Purim, literally, “lottery.” Because, indeed, life often feels that way. We think we are in control and we feel secure, but in the blink of an eye it can change, as a result of Haman, of October 7th or just crossing the street.
Last week, my son Yonah was in an Aroma Cafe outside of Be’er Sheva leading a Birthright Israel trip. As he stood in line to get coffee, a terrorist walked into the cafe and stabbed the soldier standing in line in front of Yonah. Yonah was able to restrain the terrorist enough that the soldier and those critically injured, stood up and shot the terrorist. The soldier died later that day. Many people called us, proclaiming Yonah a hero, but of course in Israel today, half the population are heroes, constantly braving life threatening situations to defend the state, even though often there is no video as there was in Yonah’s case. (You can watch the video here.)
Watching the video, as the terrorist stood next to Yonah and proceeded forward, I felt the highlighted sense of the terrifying side of Purim; the seeming randomness, the precariousness. What if there had been no one in uniform? What if he had had a gun instead of a knife? What if Yonah had not had him in a good hold, or the soldier was unable to stand, cock his gun and shoot—how many people would have died?
The Medrash tells the following story: When Isaac returned from the Akedah, the binding, his mother asked him where he had been. He answered by telling her the story of his binding—how Abraham brought him to the mountain, bound him and was about to slaughter him, when an angel called out and stopped him. Sara asked, “If not for the angel, you already would have been slaughtered?” Isaac replied, “Yes.” At that moment, says the Medrash, she cried out and died.
The obvious question is, why did she die? After all, Isaac is standing right in front of her alive and well! I believe she died out of the existential realization of precisely this precariousness of life. “If the angel had not called out, you would already have been killed!” The human can perceive the infinite, be self-conscious, hope, love, think and change the world; yet even so, human life is precious and seemingly random. Like Purim, we cannot separate the celebration from the threat, and life from the realization that all is tenuous.
But Purim reminds us that in spite of our lack of understanding, there is a rhyme and reason, there is a God. Purim gives us faith, hope and purpose. A sense that even when God is most hidden, as in the Megillah, there is still a somehow just God. Such Purim moments are ones of elemental opening, of seeing the yaw of existence which shakes us from the everydayness of life. Such moments bring us to deeper places, they help to tease out the truly important in life, the larger questions of the why and how of existence. Purim helps us to codify and integrate into our year the piercing of the veil of the everyday and the taken-for-granted, revealing a sense of depth of self, of being, and of life revealed.
I think this is why Purim is the one holiday which, according to the Medrash, will never be nullified. As long as we live in a world of nature, we will always be operating under the veil of the hiddenness of the Divine, and Purim reminds us that despite it all, we believe there is something profound which lurks underneath.
