Purim is almost upon us. It starts at sunset Wednesday March 4 and goes until sunset on March 5. It is a day to dress up, give away food (to friends) and money (to anyone and everyone who asks), and get so drunk you cannot tell the difference between, “blessed is Mordechai (the good guy),” and, “Cursed is Haman (the bad guy).”
At first glance, this doesn’t sound very Jewish, does it?
Wait, there is more…
Can you believe that our ancient sages considered Purim to be higher than Yom Kippor, our most holy day of fasting and breast-beating, and desperately seeking haShem’s (god) forgiveness?
How is this possible?
The answer is all in the Hebrew.
To begin, the book of Esther is called Megilat Esther in Hebrew. Megilah can mean scroll, so to be more accurate, it should be called the scroll of Esther.
However, these two words, megilat esther also translate into: Revealing the hidden. Let me share with you how this is so.
First, Megilat Esther is the only “book” of the bible that does not mention god. Not even once. And yet, if you read the story and think about all the improbable events, and how they all just “happen” to fit together perfectly to produce the outcome of not only saving the Jews, but rededicating the Jews to a life of following the Torah, how can you not say that haShem was orchestrating all the events in a hidden, behind the scenes way.
This is not a one time occurance in a made up myth; haShem is still doing so today!
People have asked me why I believe in god. The main answer I have is that when I look back at all that has happened in my life, and what I have thought and believed over the years, and compare that to where I am today, the only answer I have is that someone has to be pulling the strings and guiding me to get here. No other answer makes sense to me. The odds of all the coincidences is just too high to say it is chance.
I ask you to look back of your life and see if you can explain how you got to be where you are without a Divine director helping out.
One can see this in even small segments of one’s life. You know the parts of one’s life that defy any rational explanation of how or why they occured.
The Hebrew doesn’t stop just with this example.
Yom Kippor, the Day of Atonement, is called Yom haKipporim in the Torah. The word Yom means day. The second word, haKipporim can be said to have two prefixes, the ‘ha’ and the ‘ki’ which mean ‘the’ and ‘like.’ What is left is the word pporim, or purim if we transliterate the sounds (in Hebrew, they are spelled the same). So, what we have, says our sages, is that Yom Kippor, or Yom haKipporim, is really: The day like Purim.
Our sages didn’t stop there. They wanted to know how was it possible for Purim to be so much higher that Yom Kippor, that the latter is compared to the former. Their answer is that on Yom Kippor, we need to abstain from this world in order to reach the same spiritual hights we reach on Purim as we eat and drink and participate in the world.
The last thing I want to touch on (before this gets too long) is this idea of getting really drunk. What is up with that?
The answer to that is related to what we have been discussing.
From our vantage point, there is good and evil. Mordechai is good and Haman is the villian of our story. However, when we attain the holy drunkeness of Purim, our blinders fall away and we see that what we thought was bad, is really good. If it wasn’t for Haman, the Jewish people would not have renewed the faith and continued as a people.
In other words, sometimes what appears evil is really there to give us a push back onto the right track. And the point of Purim is to use the drunkeness to let go of our preconditioned believes in good and evil, and rise above, to that high spiritual place where we can see the good that what we thought evil has led us to.
Now, you might have a hard time buying into such a thought. You might even be coming up with examples to challenge this assumption.
My answer to you is: Of course. You are absolutely right from where you are right now. However, I challenge you to wait until Purim, and find that sacred drunkeness of the day, and then, from that vantage point, bring forward your examples, and see if you don’t see them a little differently.
And then come back and tell me what you think by posting a comment. 😉
About the Author
Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.