by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

March 20, 2008

There’s more to Purim than meets the eye — or tongue. One of the year’s most festive days, Purim not only captures the universal seriousness of good triumphing over evil, but for one day a year, the relatively strict attitudes of Judaism are replaced with a carnival-like atmosphere. The Talmud even commands us to get so drunk to the extent “that we cannot tell the difference between cursing Haman and blessing Mordechai.” (B.T. Megilla 7B).

But who is the real hero of Purim? Is it the Jewish beauty who wins the king’s heart and becomes the voice of the Jews as she pleads before the one man who has the power to save or destroy her people?

Or is it the king himself, who, despite being surrounded by evil men — most notably Haman — rises above the prejudices toward Jews? When he withdraws the edict, the king demonstrates the kind of wise sovereignty select monarchs have had toward their Jewish subjects throughout the ages.

Or is Mordechai the hero, whom divine providence put in the right place at the right time, allowing him to overhear the mutinous plot of two of Ahasuerus’ ministers, thereby saving the king’s life? Or perhaps he’s the hero because he never forgets he is a Jew, refusing to bow down to Haman no matter the consequences.

To better understand who the real hero might be, we should pay close attention to that paradoxical dictum about drunkenness.

The historical period of the Book of Esther is 485-465 BCE. Yet, in 538 BCE, the Persian leader Cyrus had already granted the Jews permission to return to Israel and rebuild the Temple. Most didn’t; economically and socially, the Jews of Shushan had it good, so the overwhelming majority opted against the poverty and military insecurity of Israel. The Book of Esther may very well be the first work to describe what happens to a Jewish community in the Diaspora.

The Jews were the cream of Shushan society. PJY’s (Persian Jewish Yuppies) were involved in the media, law, and medicine and spent their free nights at parties with seven-course feasts. Indeed, the Scroll of Esther opens with the king’s invitation to the Jewish community (no mention of kosher caterers). Even intermarriage seems so deeply entrenched that when the niece of the leading religious Jew of the city marries the king, the text only says that “she was taken.” (Esther 2:8) There is no indication she put up a fight or attempted to make herself ugly during the year of primping in the king’s harem.

Perhaps God’s name does not appear in the scroll because in Shushan these Jews were cut off from God. Nonetheless, history tells us that the Creator had other plans for his people. In effect, God was saying: “Either you will remember that you’re Jews on your own, or I’ll have to remind you.”

Haman isn’t the first figure who wants to destroy the Jewish people. In the beginning of the Book of Exodus, the midrash tells us, the Jews had penetrated to the 49 depths of impurity: “And the children of Israel were fruitful, increased like crawling creatures, multiplied, waxed exceedingly mighty, and the land was filled with them?” (Exodus 1:7) The midrash concludes that in saturating the land of Egypt, the Jews had indulged in every forbidden practice, completing their assimilation.

And then what happens? “There arose a new king over Egypt?” (1:8) The party is over. Edicts begin, death is in the air, and pogroms occur.

When Jews forget that they are Jews, a gentile will remind them. His name is Pharaoh, Haman, Stalin, Hitler.

Mordechai, in sackcloth and ashes, appears before the palace gates and the message is heard wherever Jews live. A great mourning cry rises. Mordechai bids Esther to plead for her Jewishness.

Esther can no longer hide her Jewishness. When she steps out of the closet, declaring to the king that Haman’s edict is directed against her people, she risks everything. At that moment, she becomes, possibly, the first ba’alat teshuva.

On Purim, we are commanded to drink so much because we are in a quandary. Without Haman, the tide of assimilation might not have stopped. And if, in a twisted way, we owe our continued existence to this classic anti-Semite, then understanding this paradox of the survival of the Jewish people requires that we drink so much that we cannot tell the difference between blessing one and cursing the other. Thanks to Haman, we’re still alive. If we think about what that means, we have to drink because sober, it is a shocking idea.

This is the legacy of exile: The personification of evil forces us to remember that we are Jews. That’s why one day a year we fathom the unfathomable — the cursed blessing of Haman, the anti-Semite.

Shlomo Riskin is the chief rabbi of the city of Efrat and dean of Ohr Torah Institutes in Israel.

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