On Purim as a wartime holiday
A belated reflection as we head into Passover -- and a reply to Peter Beinart's simplifications.
We are about to head into Passover, but I want to offer some belated thoughts on the previous holiday we celebrated, Purim. Longtime Israel critic Peter Beinart used the occasion of Purim recently to warn Jews against supporting Israel’s war — and along the way, badly distorted the lessons of the holiday, in my view. (I’m struggling with a longer post about where that war stands, so stay tuned.)
Purim is a quintessential diaspora holiday, celebrating the survival of the Jews of Persia against a plot by an evil courtier to wipe them out. The story itself features many twists and turns, with a Jewish princess trying to summon the courage to alert the king to what’s coming, then playing out her strategy over two nights of feasting to which the courtier is invited. The holiday is celebrated by dressing up, sending treats to friends, and reading the whole story, the “Megillat Esther,” out loud in synagogue. Here is what Beinart had to say about it in the Guardian. Note I’m taking some liberties with ellipses, and it’s worth reading the full piece. It comes across a bit more subtly than this excerpting suggests, but you can’t really excuse the line: “With the blood of their foes barely dry, the Jews feast and make merry.” Here’s a bit more:
What we notice, and don’t notice, about that story says a lot about what we notice, and don’t notice, in Israel and Palestine … The book of Esther doesn’t end with Haman’s death. It continues because although Haman is gone, his edict to kill the Jews remains. The king can’t reverse it. What he can do is empower Mordechai and his kinsmen to take matters into their own hands. Which they do. “The Jews struck at their enemies with the sword,” proclaims the book of Esther, “slaying and destroying; they wreaked their will upon their enemies.” On the 13th day of the month of Adar, the Jews kill 75,000 people. They declare the 14th “a day of feasting and merrymaking”. With the blood of their foes barely dry, the Jews feast and make merry. That’s the origin of Purim. … My hope, this Purim, is that when Jews encounter the slaughter that concludes the Book of Esther, we shudder. And that from this revulsion comes a new dedication to ending the slaughter being committed in our name in the Gaza Strip.
The problem with this analysis is that Beinart himself ignores some pretty important components of the Book of Esther. Having misread the scroll, he then badly misreads Israeli history to cast the Jewish state in the worst possible light, suggesting that the flight and expulsion of Palestinians that occurred before a full war broke out in 1948 happened in a state of peace — in fact, the full war was preceded by what’s known as the “civil war in mandatory Palestine.” But let’s stick with the scroll. Here’s the relevant text from the Book of Esther:
5 The Jews struck down all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying them; they did to those who hated them as they pleased. 6 In the royal precinct of Susa, the Jews killed and destroyed five hundred people. 7 They also killed Parshandatha, Dalphon, Aspatha, 8 Poratha, Adalia, Aridatha, 9 Parmashta, Arisai, Aridai, and Vaizatha, 10 the ten sons of Haman, son of Hammedatha, the foe of the Jews. However, they did not engage in plundering.
11 On the same day, when the number of those killed in the royal precinct of Susa was reported to the king, 12 he said to Queen Esther: “In the royal precinct of Susa the Jews have killed and destroyed five hundred people, as well as the ten sons of Haman. What must they have done in the other royal provinces! You shall again be granted whatever you ask, and whatever you request shall be honored.” 13 So Esther said, “If it pleases your majesty, let the Jews in Susa be permitted again tomorrow to act according to today’s decree, and let the ten sons of Haman be impaled on stakes.” 14 The king then gave an order that this be done, and the decree was published in Susa. So the ten sons of Haman were impaled, 15 and the Jews in Susa mustered again on the fourteenth of the month of Adar and killed three hundred people in Susa. However, they did not engage in plundering.
16 The other Jews, who dwelt in the royal provinces, also mustered and defended themselves, and obtained rest from their enemies. They killed seventy-five thousand of those who hated them, but they did not engage in plunder. 17 This happened on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar.
The Feast of Purim.[a] On the fourteenth of the month they rested, and made it a day of feasting and rejoicing.
Beinart is correct that this is a disturbing text. Any text that recounts the killing of 75,000 people is disturbing. But as my emphasis shows, the text also seems to be at pains to suggest that the Jews disciplined their violence. They killed “their enemies” — admittedly, at some points it’s “those who hated them” or even “just people” — and they did not pillage. To me, the lesson here is not that the Jews went on a campaign of mass slaughter and then “with the blood of their foes barely dry, the Jews feast and make merry.” It’s that they killed those who would have destroyed them but did so while imposing limits on themselves. And when they feasted and rejoiced, they did not cheer the slaughter of their enemies. They cheered their own survival.
Purim itself means “lots,” as in casting lots in a game of chance. In the story, the evil Haman casts lots to choose the date of the Jews’ destruction. The name of the holiday stresses the unpredictability of Jewish fates — an unpredictability that is emphasized by the masking and costumes with which we celebrate the holiday. But the “casting of lots” could also be a reference to war in general. It’s a situation in which communities are pitted against one another tragically, in which the fog of the fighting makes it difficult to separate right from wrong, in which people must take on new identities to survive, and perhaps to do the terrible things they are asked to do, and in which deception and intrigue are the order of the day.
So ultimately, the Purim story is what we make of it. I don’t see it as a morality tale implicating the Jews in genocidal violence. I see it as a deep reflection of the uncertainty, tragedy, and confusion of war and survival amid violence — and an occasion to insist that we do no more violence than is necessary, and look at that violence from a distance, questioning what it says about us, and what we see when the mask comes off.
And yet, we party at Purim. We make merry. Because Judaism also insists on the celebration of life. That, perhaps, is the theme linking Purim to Passover. If on Purim we confront not only the anxiety and uncertainty of life as a minority, but also the price of survival to our enemies and to our own morality (there is no price in terms of the lives of Jewish defenders in this particular story), perhaps on Passover we can ask what it would look like to be liberated from the slavery of such conflicts.1
This Passover, I will pray for the liberation of our hostages. For the families grieving fallen soldiers and innocent victims in Israel. For the families grieving innocent victims in Gaza — and even those grieving the somewhat less innocent, young men and teenagers Hamas may have brainwashed into picking up a Kalashnikov, but who were not hardened terrorists. I will pray that the people on both sides who just want to live get that opportunity again.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep working on that other post — because I think there is much to question about the Gaza war, especially now. But I refuse to read either Jewish history or the Jewish present in the binaries that Beinart would impose on us.
Passover has its own troubling elements, with the plagues that God is said to impose on the Egyptians.