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"The Paradoxes of Purim"
by Shlomo Riskin

G-d does not shy away from the challenge. In the next fifteen verses Abraham is commanded to take a heifer, a she-goat and a ram which he must split in half and then pass between the pieces together with smoke and a fiery torch - as well as a turtle-dove and pigeon, which are not to be split. Abraham will then successfully chase away a vulture which descends upon the pieces, after which the patriarch will succumb to a deep sleep which will fill him with a great black dread. G-d speaks: " You must know that your seed will be strangers in a land (Egypt) which is not theirs, and they (the Egyptians) shall enslave them and oppress them for 400 years..... Afterwards, the will leave with great wealth..... and the fourth generation will return here....... on that day G-d cut a covenant with Abram saying: "to your seed have I given this land from the River of Egypt (Nile) until the great River, the Euphrates (G-n 15: 9-19)".

We can't pin Purim in time. Even the Megillah of Esther itself records how different localities in Persia waged battles on different days, the 13th to the 15th of Adar, which is why to this day (depending if it's a walled city or not) there are different dates for the festival. For example, this year most of Israel celebrates Purim on Thursday, but in Jerusalem and other walled cities, Thursday is a regular day while Friday becomes festive. On Purim time and space are intimately connected, one's physical location creating a reality in time. Indeed, because of the distance of certain neighborhoods on the outskirts of Jerusalem to the wall of the Old City, many of these residents take the strict view and celebrate both days of Purim, this year listening to the megillah on Thursday and on Friday.

When it comes to all other festivals, we have a clear idea of what lies at the center, not just the historic occasion, but the message implicit in that event: the freedom of Pesach, the rejoicing of Sukkot, the Torah of Shevuot. But when it comes to Purim, we have no such one-on-one relationship. In fact, we find in the Talmud an indication that this very state of uncertainty is at the heart of Purim, the simultaneous possibility of more than one reality. Joy and tragedy are two opposites, but on Purim they are not.

In discussing the number of times for the megillah to be read, [B.T. Megillah 4a], the Talmud first records R. Yehoshua ben Levi's ruling that it is incumbent upon a person to read the megillah at night and to repeat it during the day, because it is written, "O my G d, I cry in the daytime, but You hear not, and in the night season, and I have no rest." [Psalms 22:3]"

But several lines later, the text quotes another sage with the same opinion, but R. Chelbo, in the name of R. Ula Birah, quotes another verse. "..to the end that my glory sing praise to you, and not be silent. O Lord my G d, I will give thanks to you forever." [Psalms 30:13]

The obvious question is why two quotes. If R. Chelbo is simply adding another verse, why does the Talmud bother to record it? But it must be that the Talmud wants us to pay particular attention to these verses. They are not there simply for the sake of decoration.

Let's first look at their contexts. Turning to Psalms, we find that the chapter where R. Yehoshua quotes from begins: "My G d, my G d, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my loud complaint? ..O my G d, I cry in the daytime..."

It's obvious that this is a moment of great pain. What could be worse than being forsaken by G d, particularly if the speaker is King David?

But the second citation evokes a totally different mood. Chapter 30 of Psalms is a song of dedication of the house of David. It begins, "I will extol you, for you have lifted me up, ...I cried to you, and you have healed me.... you have kept me alive...Lord you have turned my mourning into dancing, you have loosed my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness...". Here pain is no longer the issue, we're in a state of glory and joy, ecstatic cries for having been triumphant, deliriously thankful to G d for having been saved.

I believe that the reason why the Talmud cites these two diametrically opposite quotes is because it wants to teach us that there are really two ways to approach Purim. The very name of the festival, Purim, means 'lots,' as in lottery, with Haman's lottery itself the symbol of a life where fate is blind. We are all victims of some terrible lottery affecting our lives. Anything can happen, and usually anything does happen.

Alone of all the festivals, Purim transpired in the Diaspora. And what can we say about galut, even when it turns out that we were saved, what about the next time? This time in Persia it's true that G d worked an invisible miracle behind the scenes, but in the Diaspora the one guarantee is that no sooner do we get rid of one tyrant, another is waiting in the wings. In the Diaspora, under the open gentile sky, we're exposed to everything. When the Sages considered why we do not say Hallel on Purim -after all the Jewish people were saved from destruction-- they explained that "we're still slaves to Ahashveraush." Despite the miracle, the circumstances that allowed a potential tragedy to ferment, a king that Haman could twist around his finger, is still with us --we still live in a world where Ahashveraush the king must be placated. And we say don't say Hallel on Purim because Hallel is reserved for times that express ultimate states of reality, freedom, Torah, joy, judgement, atonement, whereas the victory of Purim is part of an ongoing, evolutionary process. Haman is still with us.

Another aspect to the fragility of the victory that Purim represents is the fact that Esther sends an igeret, a letter, which compared to the greater permanence of a book expresses transience. Furthermore, the celebratory aspect of Purim itself centers on costumes and masks, where things are not what they seem to be, a topsy-turvy world, everything changes. And if I want to be happy, I'm not happy on my own, I have to turn to wine and whiskey, but the joy from alcohol is fleeting, it's not a profound, penetrating joy.

From this perspective, Purim is the ironic and bitter expression of what fleeting life is all about: you can never be sure of anything, especially seen though the fog of whiskey. But lest we despair too quickly, there is also another way to experience Purim, and this is why the Talmud quotes the second verse which speaks of unrestrained joy and utter thankfulness to G d.

What transformed a day of potential tragedy into a day of great joy is that we look at the tragedy with slightly different eyes. Yes, we are under the open sky, but the seeming invisibility of G d should not make us feel utterly abandoned. Rather, it necessitated the involvement of Esther. She could have had everything, half the kingdom was hers, but since her people were under threat of execution, she risked her life to approach the king. She knew very well that her presence in the king's court was only the result of the fact that Ahashveraush had not found his previous wife Vashti to his liking, and had her killed. So too now the king could act on his power and kill Esther, and six months down the road, there would be a new queeen, and Esther would disappear into the footnotes of Persian history.

The risk she took, the mesirat nefesh, is the ultimate message of Purim, that a single person can make a difference. Esther's behavior is what makes Purim for us a great day, a day of joy and thanksgiving. Deep in the horrors of the Diaspora emerges a person who commits herself to a mode of behavior that underscores the means by which Jews will survive for the length of the Diaspora.

That this is message of Purim can be seen from the very fact that the tale does not end with the hanging of Haman. The last chapter describes how the Jews then took up arms to fight and slay those Persians who would have killed them. Throughout the land battles were fought, underscoring that here is one miracle that requires absolute involvement. The very fact that we continue to celebrate the festival on different days, rather than creating a uniform Purim, attests to the historic consequences of our Persian-Jewish ancestors acting with mesirat nefesh. By definition then, Purim is the festival where we commit ourselves, mesirat nefesh.

Finally, there could be no greater paradox than the fact that the festival whose center is so elusive turns out to be the one festival which we will still celebrate after the coming of the messiah. According to Maimonides in his Laws of the Megilah, [2:18] Purim will be here even when all other festivals are gone, and Megilat Esther will be ranked on the level of the Five Books of Moses and the Oral Law. The coming together of the opposites of joy and tragedy creates something new.

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