The Jewish Way by Rabbi Irving Greenberg

Author:Rabbi Irving Greenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 1988-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

PURIM: THE REENACTMENT

Celebrating Purim

The holiday of Purim is marked not as “sacred time” but as a time of secularity and natural joy. There are no restrictions on creative labor such as there are in the pentateuchal sacred days (that is, Shabbat, first and last days of Passover, first and last days of Sukkot, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur). All men, women, and children are commanded to celebrate. Women are obligated to hear the Megillah reading. The Talmud adds that since they are obligated to hear, they may fulfill the mitzvah to read the Megillah for others, including men. It is a rare if unexercised religious role for women found in the traditional sources.

One has to love the Purim holiday. At what other time can one eat, drink (even get drunk!), send and receive gifts, make jokes and kid around, even have the rabbi encourage everyone to make noise in the synagogue (at the proper time, of course), and get mitzvah points for doing this!

Still, the core religious model of Purim observance is the classic mode of reenactment. Jews relive the entire event, from the depths of despair and looming genocide to the delirious exaltation of deliverance, revenge, and victory.

Purim opens on a somber note. Haman is identified as the descendant of Amalek, whose people attacked Israel in the desert, the symbol of cruelty to the weak. Before celebrating the defeat of the wicked, one must remember that God (as well as God’s people) has a war with the Amalekites and will not be at ease until the Amalekites are blotted out. Jews are pledged to work for the end of oppression of the weak everywhere; a temporary, partial victory should not blind one to the persistence of evil in the world. On the Sabbath before Purim, the portion of the Torah dealing with Amalek is read. This day is called Shabbat Zachor, the Sabbath of Remembrance. It is a special mitzvah of the Torah to hear the reading and thus remember.

Zachor is a mitzvah that has made modern Jews uncomfortable. The natural desire to forget and be happy collides with the ongoing pain of memory and analysis. When asked why President Ronald Reagan in 1985 initially declined to visit the Dachau concentration camp, a presidential aide explained that the President was an “up” type of person and did not like to “grovel in a grisly thing.”

Modern people who are future-oriented stress the need to forgive. They argue that there will be no reconciliation as long as the memories of the cruelties and atrocities of the past are preserved and thrown in the face of those involved. “Forget and forgive” becomes the slogan. This argument can even take the form of an attack on the victims for keeping the memory alive. In May 1985, a storm of opposition arose against President Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg, Germany military cemetery because the ceremony involved paying homage and laying a wreath in a cemetery with graves of S.S. soldiers. During the uproar, one

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