Purim traditions: From Megillah reading to masquerades

Purim celebrates the deliverance of the Jews from the plot of the Persian villain Haman to kill them. The name of the holiday is the plural form of the Babylonian or Persian word pur (“lot”), referring to the lots cast by Haman to determine when the slaughter of the Persian Jewish community was to take place (Esther 3:7). The “lots” of Purim have been compared to those cast on the Day of Atonement to determine which of the two goats is assigned to God and which to Azazel. So highly did the Kabbalists esteem Purim, that in the name of Isaac Luria, they stated that Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is “like Purim” (yom “ke’Purim”). Maimonides observed that, “Even if all the festivals should be annulled in the messianic era, Purim will never be annulled,” since it is such a perfect example of the Jewish community being protected by divine providence.

While the Passover Haggadah celebrates God’s direct intervention in freeing the Israelites from bondage and leading them out of Egypt, in the Book of Esther the name of God never appears. Instead, God works silently behind the scenes through the agency of Mordechai and Esther. The lack of any clear references to God seriously troubled the rabbis, some of whom refused to admit the Book of Esther into the Jewish canon. In the Megillah, prayers are never addressed to God in times of peril, and the Jews never have a celebration of thanksgiving to God for their deliverance. Furthermore, the stridently militant tone of the concluding chapters led the rabbis to fear that the Book of Esther might arouse the jealousy and hatred of non-Jews. Nevertheless, it was finally admitted as part of the biblical canon.

The Book of Esther is regarded as a historical account of events that actually took place in the fortress of Shushan (Susa). Although there was a King Ahasuerus, the Hebrew form of a Persian name (which the Greeks heard as Xerxes), who reigned from 486 to 465 BCE, the story presents several historical difficulties. There is no mention of Purim in Jewish literature before the 1st century BCE. A Persian king traditionally could only choose a queen from among seven noble Persian families, making his marriage to a Jewish bride improbable. Some biblical scholars note the remarkable resemblance of the names Mordecai and Esther to the major Babylonian gods Marduk and Ishtar.

In addition to the core activities of reading the Megillah, sending gifts (mishloach manot), and donating three half shekels to charity, Purim is a time of carnivals and masquerades, in which Jews are permitted to flout the commandment forbidding men to dress as women and women to dress as men (Deuteronomy 22:5). Under the influence of the Roman carnival, Italian Jews at the end of the 15th century were the first to add masquerading to the celebration of Purim, and this custom spread throughout the Jewish world. In modern Israel, a prominent feature of Purim observance in Tel Aviv is the huge parade of costumed revelers called Adloyada, with a revival of the custom last year in Jerusalem. This term derives from the statement of renowned Babylonian Talmudic scholar Rabbah, mandating that a person get so drunk (“mellowed with wine”) on Purim that “he cannot tell the difference (ad lo yada) between ‘Cursed is Haman’ and ‘Blessed is Mordechai.’” The Hebrew letters of these two phrases – “Arur Haman” “Baruch Mordechai” – have the identical numerical value (502). In Eastern Europe, Jews observed this command to inebriation so well that a proverb described a foolish person as one “who gets drunk all year and stays sober on Purim.”

Do all Jews celebrate Purim on the same day?

The Jews of Shushan, the Persian capital, continued to battle against their enemies for an extra day and did not rest until the 15th of Adar, when they celebrated their deliverance (Esther 9:18). Because Shushan was a walled city, the rabbis (Meg. 1:1) ruled that Jews living in all cities that had a fortified outer wall at the time of Joshua would observe Purim on that date. Therefore, in modern Israel Purim is celebrated on the 15th of Adar in Jerusalem (a walled city in ancient times), whereas in Tel Aviv and elsewhere the festival is observed on the 14th of the month.■

Ronald Eisenberg is a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and has a doctoral degree in Jewish studies.