The Whole Megillah: Paradoxes of Purim

Children dressed for a Purim pageant: firefighters, super heroes, and fairy princesses 

mix with Persian royalty.

Often, the Jewish holiday of Passover coincides with the Christian holiday of Easter.  This year, however, it’s the Jewish holiday of Purim that overlaps with the Christian Holy Week (Purim starts at sunset, March 23, and ends at sunset, March 24, which is also the Christian Maundy [or Holy] Thursday, the commemoration of the Last Supper).  [Note: I wrote this three years ago. This year, Purim starts at sunset, March 20. It does not intersect with Holy Week, which is considerably later this year.]

Unlike Passover, Hanukkah, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Purim is not well known among non-Jews.  It’s actually a fascinating holiday built around the story of Esther, constructed via reversals, deconstructed by millennia of Talmudic and Kabbalistic commentary, reconstructed by traditional observance . . . plus a generous helping of chaos theory. 

The Story of Esther

“The Feast of Esther,” by Dutch artist Jan Lievens, 1625.  This painting, owned by the North Carolina Museum of Art, was previously believed to be an early Rembrandt (Lievens and Rembrandt were friendly competitors who shared a studio for a couple of years).

The primary religious obligation for Purim is to attend (preferably on the evening of Purim, and in the morning as well), the reading of the entire Book of Esther (Esther Megillat/Megillah, ‘megillat’ the Hebrew word for ‘scroll’ and 'megillah' the Yiddish variant).   From this obligation comes the American slang expression, ‘the whole megillah,’ meaning a complete (sometimes tedious) exposition of a subject.

So what’s in the whole megillah?

It’s a 4^th-century BCE narrative, when the Persian Empire was dominant and most Jews were its subjects. After King Ahaseurus had Queen Vashti banished for failing to follow his order to appear (according to tradition, to appear naked except for her crown) before his assembled cronies, he orchestrated a beauty pageant to find a new queen. He chose a beautiful Jewish virgin, Esther, who refused to divulge her religious/ethnic identity.

When the evil Haman was appointed prime minister, Mordechai, the leader of the Jews (and Esther’s cousin), defied the king’s orders and refused to bow to Haman.  Incensed, Haman convinced the king to order the extermination of all the Jews on the 13^th of Adar—a date chosen by a lottery Haman devised.

Mordechai called for the Jews to repent, fast, and pray.  Concurrently, Esther asked the king and Haman to join her for a feast, where she revealed to the king her Jewish identity. King Ahasuerus, devoted to Esther, ordered Haman to be hanged.  Mordechai was appointed prime minister in his stead, and a new decree was issued—granting the Jews the right to defend themselves against their enemies.

On the 13^th of Adar, the very day Haman had marked for their genocide, the Jews mobilized and killed many of their enemies throughout the Persian Empire.  On the 14^th of Adar, they rested and celebrated.

Trading Places

“Esther” by British artist John Everett Millais, 1865.  Millais borrowed the embroidered coat from General Charles Gordon, who had received it from the Chinese emperor after Gordon’s men helped put down the Taiping Rebellion. True to the spirit of Purim reversals (but perhaps unaware of them), Millais turned the coat inside out in order to create a striking new pattern. 

The Esther Megillah brims with reversals of fortune.  The 13^th of Adar becoming the date of Jewish victory over the people’s enemies rather than their extermination by these enemies is just the culminating paradox. Queen Vashti was replaced by Queen Esther:  the former was cast away because she disobeyed her King’s command, and the latter also risked losing her position, even her life, by disobeying the King when she appeared unbidden (a serious violation of court etiquette) to disclose Haman’s treachery. Mordechai too violated etiquette when he refused to bow to Haman; the insult marked him for death, yet Haman was hung on the very gallows he’d built for Mordechai’s execution . . . and Mordechai became Prime Minister in Haman’s stead. 

Such reversals are central to this narrative, which displays chiastic structure, an inverted parallelism through which one motif or character rises while the other falls.  Less obvious parallels occur between Mordechai and Esther. Mordechai had gained Ahasuerus’s trust by discovering a secret palace assassination plot and using Esther to inform the King. Esther foiled Haman’s genocidal assassination plot by revealing another secret to the King – the secret of her true identity.  Mordechai’s secret was what he’d heard; Esther’s secret was what she was.

This crossing parallelism extends to how the protagonists wanted the deliverance to be commemorated in the future. Mordechai preferred a solemn holiday for ‘remembrance and observance’ through prayer and fasting; in contrast, Esther demanded that the events be given concrete, ‘physical’ form through the written word that would be rematerialized through oral reading. The Kabbalists assign the ‘masculine’ spiritual side of Purim to Mordechai, who believed God was punishing the Jews for religious laxness so led the community in atonement rituals in light of Haman’s threat. They assign the ‘feminine’ physical side to Esther, who wagered her body and being during a lavish feast she arranged. 

So the Megillah was written, reading it on Purim was established, and the three other obligations – sending food gifts to friends, increasing charity to the poor, and partaking in a festive meal – were instituted. It seems the ‘feminine’ side was triumphant.

Lottery Day

Dice were not only used for amusement in the ancient world; they were also used for divination, 

often in conjunction with astrology.

The Megillah is a heck of a story.  Sex, betrayal, violence, retribution, justice . . . so why is the holiday commemorating this event named after a seemingly small detail, that Haman cast lots to determine the date to annihilate Persian Jewry?  “Purim,” the Hebraicized plural of the old Persian word for ‘lot’ (throw of the dice, marker in game of chance), suggests that the narrative’s theological (and, indeed, its historical) point has something to do with randomness.

The Persian Empire was being challenged by the Roman Empire, one grand order superseding another (and transferring power over the many smaller ‘outsider’ ethnicities, like the Jews, living within their control).  Haman, an Amalekite, was also an outsider, a status he wielded as a wild card to disrupt rational political-military decision-making. But randomness turned into reversed symmetry, as the lots that dictated the 13^th of Adar as massacre day for the Jews actually marked the date as massacre day for enemies of the Jews. Order is restored. Or maybe not. After all, the Persian Empire was on its way out.

Many centuries of rabbinical commentary complicate coherent interpretation of Haman’s lots. Often, the sages have seen the lots as a challenge to God, and to God’s own randomness. Why did God favor the Jews, yet allow them to be outcast, persecuted, and slaughtered (sometimes by God himself)? No reason, reasoned Haman, so I will be Godlike in using lots to decide the Jews’ fate. But unlike previous divine interventions to stave off catastrophe -- the parting of the Red Sea or the delivery of manna in the wilderness or the directions for making Noah’s Ark – deliverance in this instance was due to human, not supernatural, means. King Asahereus became besotted with Esther, Mordechai happened to overhear a treasonous plot, Esther maneuvered her husband to denounce Haman. Human motivations, human actions, human consequences. God’s greatest gift, perhaps, to humankind . . . random lives confronting unforeseen events, lives that can be lived ethically and piously, or not. Roll the dice.

Which brings us to the essence of Purim, its sheer humanity. Such here-and-now-centeredness is contrasted to the spirit-centeredness of the its-probably-false-etymologically-connected Highest Holy Day of Yom Kippur (Yom HaKippurim in the Torah, which the masterpiece of Kabbalah, the Zohar, reads as Yom K’Purim – a day like Purim). Yom Kippur, which also involves the casting of lots to determine the scapegoat, calls for fasting, praying, sanctifying the soul; Purim calls for feasting, carousing, and celebrating human agency. The first elicits obeisance to the divine order; the second invites joyous acceptance of our corporeal humanity and our own possibilities to effect change.

Eating Haman’s Pockets, or Hat, or Ears

Hamantaschen

Because of Esther’s feast and the concept that Purim commemorates the saved/liberated/militant Jewish body, Purim celebrations have always showcased comestibles.

Obviously, eating habits have changed over time, geography, and culture. Today, the most recognizable Purim treats are the hamantaschen, tri-cornered pastries enveloping sweet fillings, traditionally a poppy seed and honey mixture. Haman refers to the villain of the Esther narrative; taschen is the German/Yiddish word for pockets or pouches. Simple, nu?

Of course not. Because of Jewish migrations/expulsions throughout medieval and Renaissance Europe, many adopted words accrued additional significations (and many remembered words added new significations). Two examples:  the word ‘tash’ in Hebrew means ‘weakened’ so hamantaschen came to mean ‘Haman became weakened’; as commentaries on Esther’s feast included eating seeds, probably poppy seeds, the German/Yiddish word ‘mohn’ (seeds’) became conflated with its partial homophone (Haman) – seed pockets (Yiddish mohntashn) became Haman pockets. Today, hamantaschen are likely to be stuffed with raspberry, strawberry, or similar sweet but still seedy fruit fillings.

Then there’s the shape. It’s traditionally attributed to Haman’s three-cornered hat (perhaps a strange 18^th-century interpretation of ancient Persian haberdashery) or to the three patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) or to the tetrahedronal dice used in ancient Babylonian board games – and thus to Haman’s throwing of lots. In Israel, the pastries are called oznei Haman (Haman’s ears), evidently referring to the villain’s auricular deformity or to the story that his ears were cut off before he was hanged. That said, the shape has a practical purpose: to contain the sweet ingredients in a pastry carapace – to hide them. The reference is to the tradition that Mordechai hid his warnings about Persian perfidy in pastry dough. On another level, it suggests the concealed and revealed secrets that propel the Esther Megillat.

Drinking Your Way to Chaos and Back

A yeshiva student in Jerusalem shows off his best Purim dance moves.

Alcohol is a necessary part of the Purim feast. According to the Talmud (tractate Megillah 7b), “A person is obligated to drink on Purim until he does not know the difference between ‘cursed be Haman’ and ‘blessed be Mordechai.’” Even Rabbis who don’t endorse getting falling-down drunk teach that you should drink more than you usually do.

Wine or other alcohol is a common complement to fancy meals and holiday feasts, but why the practice of what approaches binge drinking, as Jews are supposed to be moderate the rest of the year? The reason goes back to Haman’s lots – the courting of randomness, of ‘unreason,’ the abandonment of logic, the acceptance of chaos -- but done to experience (however momentarily and blurrily) th miracle of God’s unreasonable love of his people, not to challenge that love as Haman tried to do.  In this way, Purim resembles the systems described by chaos theory, systems that in principle are predictable but appear to become random.

Getting drunk is another manifestation of the topsy-turvy nature of Purim, as normally pious, law-abiding people become boisterous carousers (who, these days, must be reminded to have a designated driver). Such personality reversal takes another form in Purim cosplay. Traditionally, children dressed up as Esther, Haman, and Mordecai; that tradition has morphed into Purim parades in which costumed Jews of all ages take part . . . and the costumes and masks no longer need reference the Biblical story. That these parades resemble Mardi Gras celebrations is no mistake. Purim is, in essence, carnivalesque: common people are Kings and Queens for a day while normal behavior and etiquette are happily transgressed, order is turned on its head, and chaos rules. 

Even the Megillah reading partakes of paradoxical play, as chaos is deliberately injected into the observance. Every time Haman’s name is uttered, children (and some grown-ups) rattle their groggers, the Purim noisemakers employed to follow the commandment to wipe out any trace of the Amalekites (the nation to which Haman belonged and which now stands for all the enemies of Israel). You are supposed to hear every word of the Megillah, while paradoxically you are supposed to drown out some portions of it. And we’re back to Haman’s ears, and soon enough we’ll be back to reasonable, unparadoxical everyday life. But not on Purim. L’chaim!

Is this New Orleans?  No, it’s a Purim parade in Holon, Israel.