celebration - will always be part of our consciousness and memory ; this will be the case even in the Messianic era , when presumably our troubles have ended .
Maimonides realized that , especially for us Jews , the past isn ’ t dead , it isn ’ t even past . In our time , the greatest bloodshed since the Holocaust that was inflicted upon us by our enemies on October 7 is not past , it remains our ugly present . Israeli society is traumatized by Hamas violence and cruelty and the Israeli government ’ s often extreme responses to them ; it is equally traumatized by the horrible fact that – at least in this instance – the sovereign Jewish state was incapable of protecting its citizens adequately . We have brothers and sisters who remain brutalized hostages in Gaza . Antisemites and other racists on the extreme left and right are using the conflict as an excuse to attack Jews throughout the world , as well as anyone else they hate .
All this suffering has caused many to ask : is it worth reading the Book of Esther and celebrating Purim ? Do the holiday ’ s themes of redemption from persecution and its mandates to celebrate our deliverance from evil with wild abandon fit our fractured , anxious mood ?
I understand these deep misgivings about Esther and Purim , but I reject them .
Now , more than ever , we need to celebrate Purim and to strengthen what I call our Esther-Mordechai consciousness .
The reason for this is found in the Book of Esther and in Maimonides ’ teachings . They emphasize the tension between Jewish diasporic reality in the seemingly unending present and hope for the idyllic future . They recognize that hatred of Jews is not going away anytime soon . Even if we were living in Messianic times , we would still need to be vigilantly conscious of past Jewish suffering and the possibility of its
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