Hear Our Voice

Purim is Thursday, March 13, but this past Sunday, Journey (our religious education program) celebrated Purim due to the upcoming Spring Break. With the story of Esther woven through the morning’s activities of team-based Purim projects, as well as a talent show performed by the students, we told, and retold, Esther’s tale, which can be summed up by that famously blunt, Jewishly sardonic, refrain appropriate for many Jewish remembrances: “They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat!” While I did not share that with our Journey students, I do recall that relaying aloud that aphorism never fails to get a laugh, despite its moroseness. It reminds me of another one: Comedy = tragedy + time. And Purim is the preeminent example of both.

We are “ordered” by our tradition to treat Purim as an opportunity for frivolity as well as indifference. Ironically, our Sages’ instruction for Purim, that “one should get so drunk on Purim, that he cannot distinguish between, ‘Blessed be Mordechai,’ and ‘Cursed be Haman,’ certainly relies upon a solid sense of safety for ourselves and others close to us. Otherwise, how could we ever let our guard down in such a way?

These are the musings that swim through my mind more so in the past year and a half than ever before. October 7, 2023, changed the 21 st century Jewish world. All our traditions of remembrance of what once they tried and failed only matter because in far too many examples, THEY didn’t fail. And there certainly has not been enough time for the tragedy of that day to be treated with any levity at all. Which is why at the end of the morning of our fun and celebration at Journey, I found myself needing to spend the last five minutes speaking a bit more honestly to the students than ever before.

To them, I offered with more kid gloves the following that I now share with you:

Celebrating Purim matters especially today, because the averted attacks on the Jews of Megillat Esther (scroll of Esther) were not averted on October 7, 2023. And that for reasons that I will never be able to fully grasp, there are a lot of people in the world who just don’t like Jews. They imagine we represent a threat to them, and we must keep our eyes open. It is true that we must never forget. But it’s not a matter of never forgetting the Holocaust. It’s a matter that we must never forget that we are a special people with a unique destiny and a unique relationship with God. This doesn’t necessarily make us better, but it does make who we are and what we have sacred enough to protect, preserve, and defend.
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