MEMORY , MOURNING , AND MORAL CLARITY Sam Levine
It had been my practice for several years to write a humorous piece for Purim . After October 7 , with the memory of the massacre , the ongoing hostage crisis , and the devastation , destruction , and death-toll in Gaza , I opted to stop . As we say in Yiddish – pas nisht – it felt unseemly .
Since October 7 , chapter 9 of the megillah has presented a particular challenge . To remind you : as the story draws to its conclusion , the chapter begins like this :
... on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month ... of Adar —... the very day on which the enemies of the Jews had expected to get them in their power , the opposite happened , and the Jews got their enemies in their power .
The opposite happened – venahafoch hu .
This is the very essence of Purim , and indeed of the megillah itself . It is a book about reversals . A story which begins with a powerless queen ends with a dominant one – venahafoch hu ; the gallows that Haman built to execute Mordechai end up being used for his own demise – venahafoch hu . And of course , in chapter nine , Haman ’ s plan to murder all the Jews of the kingdom is foiled , with its own accompanying reversal – “ Throughout the provinces ..., the Jews mustered ... to attack those who sought their hurt .” They go on a killing spree , striking down over 75,000 people throughout the kingdom .
I have always viewed the Scroll of Esther as a comedy , a literary farce . A story so deliberately structured , with such exaggerated elements , with one comic event after another , is ( in my opinion ) clearly a literary fiction . And so rather than recoiling at the grim ending , I have always delighted in it as ,
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