I love the Jewish holiday of Purim, which Jews observe this coming Saturday evening and Sunday.  While it is fun to watch all the kids and adults alike in my synagogue dressed in various costumes, clever and ridiculous, as well as indulge in homemade hamentaschen, it is the story of Purim that draws this festival near to my heart and mind.   I am proud to label myself as a lover of literature, and therefore, I find the book of Esther to be one of the most fascinating stories I have ever read.

Here is my personal, albeit abbreviated, version of the Book of Esther.  It begins with the tale of a certain king who reigns of a land of 127 provinces – that is quite a bit of territory.  One would think that this king would be very busy with all his provinces, but he makes time to party – a lot!  He has a party and orders his queen, Vashti, to come to the party and she refuses.  He is enraged.  As a result of his rage, he writes an edict that proclaims all wives must obey their husbands.  A bit extreme, I would say, and also kind of funny.  Vashti is then banished.  So now the king needs a new queen.   The palace rounds up hundreds of “young virgins” (that is what the book says) and they are then engaged in months of beauty treatments before they are brought before the king.  He chooses the Jewish girl, Esther – not that he knows she is Jewish, of course. 

Esther is an orphan and her uncle Mordechai watches close guard over the palace, sitting at the gates so as to feel some protection over Esther.  In the meantime, the king has a very pompous advisor named Hamah who is a huge megalomaniac.  He expects all present to bow down to him as he comes and goes through the palace gates.  Mordechai does not, as Jews don’t idolize other human beings.  This enrages the megalomaniac – no surprise.  To make a long story short, Haman finds out Mordechai is a Jew and decides to not only kill Mordi, but to kill all the Jews.

Re-enter Esther.  She is in a position to do something since she is married to the king.  Mordechai warns her that her life and the lives of all Jews in the land are at stake.  Esther steps up.  She is a smart girl who knows her king well.  She throws a party.  In fact, she throws two parties, and on the night of the second party, she reveals herself as a Jew and explains the situation.  The crazy thing is that the sympathetic king does not even have the power to reverse the edict that proclaims on such-and-such day the Pesians will rise up and kill the Jews.  So, he proclaims another edict that states on this day the Jews can rise up and kill the Persians (in self-protection, of course).  The reality is that lots of people are killed in the end(not the lesson I learned in Sunday school). 

The celebration is that the Jews once again fought the odds and survived.  Thus, the rabbis referred to Purim as” the world turned upside down.”  At a time when we were intended to die, we arose victorious.  When I read and study the story of Purim, I am not quite sure what happened and what we learned.  It is a ridiculous plot, full of hyperbole and exaggeration.  Characters like the king are completely ineffective and others like Haman have serious anger management issues.   And the mention of G-d’s name is completely absent from the book of Esther.  That is odd, and we have understood that to mean that there are times that G-d hides G-d’s face.

So I think of Purim and I think of our world today and I conclude the following: our world is upside down everyday, not just on Purim.  There are plenty of ineffective leaders like King Ahasheveros and plenty more power-hungry folks like Haman.  And there are certainly many groups, peoples, races and others persecuted for no good reason. Truth be told, I feel overwhelmed by the screwed up nature of our world and my power to impact change.  So maybe it is not such a bad idea to have a holiday where we hide in costumes and drink to our hearts delight.  Sometimes we just need a day to forget the harsh reality of the world.