YOU SHALL MAKE HOLY GARMENTS FOR YOUR BROTHER

AARON, FOR HONOR AND GLORY.

(Shemot 28:2)

When he showed the riches of his

glorious kingdom – R. Yossi bar

Hanina said: This teaches us that he donned the priestly garments: there (Esther 1) it is written the splendor of the glory

of his majesty, and here (Shemot 28) it is written for

honor and glory.

(Megilla 12a)

You shall make holy garments – they were thus called, because they [the

priests] served while wearing them in the place of holiness; or it can be

understood in the manner of [the verse] and they shall not sanctify the

people with their garments (Ezekiel 44:19).

(Ibn Ezra – longer

commentary – Shemot 28:2)

for honor [lekavod]

– is the spiritual kaved

– the weight, the mass, that by which the spiritual and moral content, the

character, of a person impresses itself on others. So that the meaning of the

priesthood is to express itself in he garments. Kavod is the real actual

character of the garments.

and glory – At the same time they are to be made in

such a matter that they also lend "glory" to the priest.

Pe'er [the root from which tifferet, "glory,"

is formed] is close to be'er, beher, bahar which all have

the idea at root of shining forth, being conspicuous, or distinguished.

 and

glory adds the demand that

besides the given necessary conditions expressed by for honor, the

garments also satisfy the requirements of the sense of beauty; that they

distinguish the priest in an aesthetic manner.

(Rabbi

S.R.Hirsch ad loc, Levy translation)

Reflections on Purim

Jonathan Chipman

Purim is in

many senses the strangest holiday of the Jewish calendar year. To begin with,

it is in a certain sense the most "secular" of the Jewish holidays. The

Scroll of Esther, its central text, is lacking in any definitive religious message,

at least on the surface; indeed, the name of God is totally absent from it (apart

from one passage which refers, in rather oblique fashion, to "salvation

and benefit" coming to the Jews from "another place" should

Esther fail to act (4:14); some old scrolls also hint at the

presence of God by emphasizing places where the Divine name can be found in

acrostic in the first or last letters of certain groups of words). The manner

of celebration of the holiday is likewise lacking in the elements of dignity

and seriousness, the sense of spiritual uplift and holiness felt on other

festive days. The day begins with the public reading of a scroll that tells a

rather bizarre and even outlandish (not to mention improbable) tale, in an

atmosphere of noise and total chaos in the synagogue; the rest of the day is

devoted to eating, to drinking to excess (including actual drunkenness, which

is deemed a praiseworthy state on this day!), the wearing of masks and

costumes, including cross-dressing, and various forms of tomfoolery, pranks and

generally raucous behavior.

Two

Rabbinic dicta relate to this problematic aspect, suggesting that the day as

such represents a kind of embracing of opposites: venahafokh hu, "and

it was turned around" (Est 9:1),

as the slogan of the day has it. That is, Divine Providence was indeed at work

in the events described in the Megillah, but in completely hidden fashion: "From

whence do we know that Esther is from the Torah? From the verse, 'And I will

surely hide (my face from them on that day; haster astir panay; Deut 31:18)'" (Hullin 139b). "Wherever the

Megillah refers to 'King Ahashverosh' it refers specifically to Ahasverosh; wherever

it speaks of 'the king' without elaboration, this refers to both sacred and

mundane" (Esther Rabbah, at Est 1:9). That is, the word "king"

refers simultaneously to the rather stupid, earthly king of the book, and to

the King of Kings, the Holy One blessed be He, who secretly moves events.

This

idea, of Purim and the Megillah enjoying special significance precisely because

it is enwrapped in a mundane, secular shell, is developed extensively in later

commentaries and works of derush, and especially in the literature of

Hasidism, which is replete with homilies extolling the special holiness and

importance of Prim, precisely because things are done therein "in hidden

fashion."

But

there is a second, more serious problem with Purim. Now and again, one

encounters the view that Purim is a festival that somehow celebrates violence,

that it is based on unworthy emotions of vengefulness against the enemies of

the Jewish people, and rejoicing in their downfall; that the entire story, and

the celebration that comes in its wake, is based upon the downfall of Haman,

the great enemy, and the rise to power and greatness of Mordecai the Jew.

According

to this reading, the behavior of the heroes of the Megillah involves more than

a few morally questionable actions: at the beginning, Mordecai sends his niece

and ward, Esther, a pure Jewish virgin, to submit to the embraces of a Gentile

king – an act on his part hardly better than pimping! Esther herself conceals "her

people and her birth," as if she were ashamed of her Jewishness. Mordecai's

refusal to bow before Haman, by which he endangered his entire people, may also

be seen in negative light – obstinately attaching excessive significance to an

act of simple civility and respect to a high royal official. And then, after

the turnabout, the Jews themselves engage in massive slaughter of thousands of

civilians, who may well have been unarmed; and so on. All this, as I said, is

an alternative, unsympathetic, but coherent and plausible reading of the Scroll

of Esther – one which has been propounded at various points in history.

Recently,

historian Elliott Horowitz wrote a book entitled Reckless Rites,¹

in which he explores the more negative aspect of Purim, including condemnation

of the Book of Esther and/or the festival of Purim by both Non-Jews (often with

no small measure of hypocrisy) and by a certain strain of liberal, enlightened

Jew. Among other facts, he mentions that during the Middle Ages there were

certain places were it was customary to conduct a symbolic flogging or burning

in effigy of Haman, or to designate someone to play the role of Haman in the "Purim

Speil" – at times a Jew and at times a Gentile – who would be subject to

blows, spitting, etc. This "Haman" was often in turn identified with

the contemporary enemies of the Jewish community. On some relatively rare

occasions this would also cross the boundary of symbolic action, and descend

into real violence. He mentions two documented cases in history – in Inmestar (near

Antioch in Syria) in the 5^th century, and in Bray or Brie in Provence

in 1191 or 1192 – in which such Purim "festivities" ended in the

actual murder of the victim. But this was overshadowed in our own lifetime, on

the awful Purim of 1994, when 29 Arab worshippers were slaughtered in cold

blood at the Cave of the Mekhpelah by Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler from

Hevron – an event that for some people left an indelible stain on the day.

The

sense of repulsion towards Purim on the part of some Jews is indicated by the

urban legend that the late Ernst Simon, a religious intellectual of high-minded

ethical and humanistic principles (and one of the founding fathers of the early

movement for peace and reconciliation between Jews and Arabs, Brit Shalom)

deliberately avoided celebrating this holiday. Every year he would spend the 14^th

of Adar in his home in Jerusalem, and then, on the eve of

Shushan Purim (the 15^th of Adar), would travel to Tel Aviv.

The

question that needs to be considered is: are there aspects of Purim that are in

fact unseemly, deserving of condemnation – or is, perhaps, the very foundation

of the festival tainted?

Returning

for a moment to the element of riotousness, frivolity, and inebriety associated

with Purim: Purim may be seen, essentially, as based upon the model of the "carnival,"

a kind of "moral holiday," in which man is freed from the normal

restraints of behavioral limits.² Almost every culture (or, in any

event, what might be called "folk" cultures) has its days of riotous

behavior, of breaking conventional boundaries, of a structured easing of

certain norms, and the temporary erasing or obscuring of boundaries of social

class and hierarchy. Put otherwise, one might say that the carnival is a time

of ritualized chaos within socially accepted limits. (Incidentally,

by comparison with carnivals in other cultures, Purim is generally rather tame

– compare, for example, the rather explicit displays of near nudity and

sexuality during Mardi Gras in such places as Rio de Janeiro.)

But

beyond the joy and levity of the carnival, there is another aspect: in an

almost paradoxical sense, beneath the surface of hilarity, there is an almost

tragic consciousness, a kind of keen awareness of the absurdity of life: "We

laugh, because otherwise we would have to cry." The carnival is a

defiance, for one day, of the human condition: against our mortality; against

the social structure of ruler and ruled, of strong and weak, of rich and poor;

and against the random, unpredictable nature of life, in which we may be

overtaken at any moment by catastrophe, turning our lives around – wars,

natural disasters, meaningless violence, disease, accidents, etc. On the depth

level, the carnival is a kind of protest against the random, chaotic nature of

life itself. We ourselves create chaos, as it were, to protest against the

chaos in the universe.

But

to return specifically to the Jews and to Purim: there is a particular element

of danger and insecurity in Jewish existence throughout the generations. I do

not know to what extent the events portrayed in the Megillah occurred exactly

as described there, but it does not require much imagination to see in the Jews

of Shushan, dependent upon the whims of a stupid, licentious, and drunken king,

as an archetype for Jewish communities in all their places of exile, dependent

upon the good-will and mercies of Gentile rulers and the clever management of

relations with them. (And perhaps one should add: even Jews living in their own

independent state find themselves more than a little dependent on the mercy and

realpolitik considerations of international powers stronger than

themselves, be it in decisions to wage war or to wage peace.)

From

here we return to the question with which we began: Purim and violence. While

Horowitz's book is primarily a historical work – and as such I found it

fascinating, filled with little-known information on a wide variety of

subjects, relating both to the Purim and the Megillah, and to Jewish violence

generally – here and there he expresses an ideological position, to which I

must take exception. Thus, in the chapter on "Amalek," he criticizes

those who draw a comparison between Amalek and the historical enemies of the

Jewish people in recent times, even taking to task those who compared Hitler

and the Nazis to Amalek during the 1930s and '40s (pp.

137-145). He

mentions in particular a comment by Rav Soloveitchik for advancing "the

notion that an Amalekite was anyone, of any background, who harbored

unconditional hatred of the Jewish people" (p. 144).

I

fail to see what is so reprehensible in this approach. Is not evil, even what

might be called absolute evil, part of the reality of our world? Can every

conflict between people be understood in purely socio-economic terms that, with

a bit of good-will and rationalism, could be explained away and resolved? Are

there not individuals or movements towards whom the only appropriate human and

value reaction is one of utter hatred and disgust and abhorrence? True, it is

too easy to engage in demonization of the other, of the rival who contests

one's ownership of the same "God's little acre." And certainly, I

would agree with him that there is such a tendency in the present situation, of

seeing all Arabs or Palestinian nationalism as the embodiment of evil (thereby

conveniently overlooking the injustices and acts of oppression committed by our

side). But there is also a danger of moral relativism, of losing one's moral

compass, in going to the opposite extreme and failing to recognize demonic

hatred and religiously-motivated hatred on the other side.

And,

I might add, the essay on Purim in which Rav Soloveitchik makes these comments

is imbued davka with a universal spirit, with a sense of the universal,

existential tragedy represented by Purim, and with the notion of man as

imprinted with the Divine image, and the Amalek syndrome as a strange exception

in which man "exchanges his Godly personality for a satanic persona… "³

To

conclude: as I understand it, the Torah allows room for expression of the

entire gamut of human experience, including those aspects of life that are not

specifically "religious." By their inclusion in the framework of the

mitzvoth, they are uplifted to their source in holiness. Such is the case

regarding such things as joy, sadness, sexuality, food, business life, and even

the realm of doubt and questioning. The same holds true for the anarchic

impulse within mankind. Purim provides a certain release for the human need to

leave the accepted social and religious order – within a certain framework that

nevertheless involves a certain degree of restraint and discipline – and to

live in a world of reversal. The impulse towards violence and aggression is

also among the basic components of human personality, and is at times a

necessary evil. Thus, even the most ardent lover of peace needn't reject Purim,

the festival of a people that has been "scattered and divided among the

nations," that has known much suffering during the course of its long

history, and that rejoices in its survival despite the many "Hamans" that

have risen up in the attempt to destroy it. Under such circumstances, one may

forgive them if, at times, they ignore the verse from Proverbs, "When your

enemy falls do not rejoice."

1    Reckless

Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton–Oxford:

Princeton

University

Press, 2006).

2    On the notion of the carnival and its

meanings, see Harvey Cox, Festival of Fools; and cf. Mario Vargas Llosa,

The Language of Passion, tr. N. Wimmer (New York, 2000), 229-234. And

see also my essay on "Mardi Gras and Purim," HY VI: Purim.

3    "On the

Metaphysical Meaning of the Festival of Purim" [Hebrew], in

his Divrei Hashkafah (Jerusalem,

1995), 175-188, at 182-183.

Rabbi

Jonathan Chipman is a translator by profession, and a scholar in Jewish

studies. He writes a weekly sheet (in English) on the portion of the week and

the Haftara, titled "Hitsei Yehonatan". (Anyone interested in

ordering a sample of subscription can write via email to: yonarand@internet-zahav.net.)

Remember what Amalek did to you on your

forget!

(Devarim 25: 17-19)

Blot out the memory of Amalek – Israel said to the Holy One Blessed Be He: Master

of all worlds, you tell us to blot out the memory of Amalek!? We are flesh and

blood, we last but an hour – You who exist and live forever – You remember! The

Holy One Blessed Be He told them: My children, you need only read the passage

about Amalek every year, and I will count it as if you are blotting its name

out from the world.

(Pesiktah Rabbati 12)

It is a positive commandment to destroy the memory of Amalek, for it

says, You shall blot out the memory of Amalek, and it is a positive

commandment to always recall its evil deeds and waylaying in order to inflame

hatred against it, for it is said, remember what Amalek did to you.

Tradition teaches that remember is performed with the mouth, do not forget

with the heart, for it is forbidden to forget to bear hostility and hatred

towards it.

(RaMBaM, Hilkhot Melakhim,

5:5)

'Do not forget' – Do

not forget this thing if the day comes and you will want to become like Amalek,

and, like Amalek, you fail to recognize your obligation and do not know God.

Rather, you only seek opportunities, in matters small or great, to exploit your

advantage in order to harm your fellow men. Do not forget this if the day comes

and you ask to relieve your heart of its role and its mission as Israel that you have taken upon yourself amongst

humanity. Do not envy the laurels which a foolish world throws to those happy

with having destroyed the happiness of others. Remember the tear-soaked soil

which nurtures the laurels of those wreathes, do not forget this thing when the

day comes and you yourself suffer Amalek's violence and coarseness. Keep

standing straight! Preserve the humanity and values of justice that you learned

from your God. The future belongs to them, and in the end humanity and justice

will overcome coarseness and violence. You yourself were sent in order to

announce and to bring near – with your very example – that overcoming and that

future.

Do not forget – and in order that you not forget, remember

from time to time, renew in your heart the memory of Amalek and what you have

been told of its future.

(From Rabbi Samson Raphael

Hirsch's commentary on Devarim 25:19, written circa 1860!)

Rava asked: Which takes precedence, reading the Megillah or [burying a] meit

mitzvah [a deserted corpse]? Does reading the Megillah take precedence

because it involves the publicizing of the miracle, or does meit

mitzvah take precedence because of [concern for] human dignity?

After asking the question, he answered it himself: Meit mitzvah

takes precedence, for the sage said: Great is human dignity which overrides

a prohibition of the Torah.

(Megillah 3b)

It is better to spend more on gifts to the poor than

on the Purim meal or on presents to friends. For no joy is greater or more glorious

than the joy of gladdening the hearts of the poor, the orphans, the widows, and

the strangers. Indeed, he who causes the hearts of these unfortunates to

rejoice emulates the Divine Presence, of whom Scripture says, to revive the

spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones (Isaiah

57:15).

(RaMBaM Hilkhot

Meggilah ve'Hanukka 2:17

– Yale translation)

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