COMMENTARY: Purim: Righteous Anger

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) (UNDATED) Psychiatrists know that stressed-out people must allow their emotions to erupt on a regular basis. Keeping intense feelings “under control” with a “stiff upper lip” is a recipe for disaster and pain. Unless we show anger, […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

(UNDATED) Psychiatrists know that stressed-out people must allow their emotions to erupt on a regular basis. Keeping intense feelings “under control” with a “stiff upper lip” is a recipe for disaster and pain. Unless we show anger, we will implode in a frenzy of self-inflicted traumas like insomnia, severe headaches, eating disorders, nervous tics and even violent behavior.


What is sound psychological advice for individuals is also true for groups of people. When there is no legitimate outlet for repressed anger, political and religious communities often become pathological when they remember the injustices that have befallen them.

The Jewish people have a religiously sanctioned outlet that became an emotional safety valve during the troubled centuries of prisonlike ghettos, expulsions, inquisitions, crusades, and other violent anti-Jewish experiences that culminated in the Holocaust. That healthy outlet is the annual Purim festival beginning this year on Monday evening, March 20, and continuing through the next day.

Based on the biblical book of Esther, Purim (the Hebrew word means lots or dice) lacks the spiritual grandeur of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Jewish High Holidays. And Purim, unlike Passover, does not recount the glorious Exodus story when the Hebrews fled from Egyptian slavery. Nor does Purim commemorate a great military victory a la Hanukkah.

Instead, Purim is an earthy holiday that dramatically recounts the story of Haman, an anti-Semitic Persian prime minister; Ahasuerus, an incredibly weak monarch; Esther, a beautiful queen; and Mordecai, a politically astute Jewish leader.

Although Purim is an ancient story, its all-too familiar characters have continually appeared in various guises throughout Jewish history in a myriad of locales. Interestingly, Esther is the only book in the entire Bible that does not contain a single mention of God, and Haman’s potential victims are referred to as “Jews,” a modern term, and not Israelites or Hebrews.

Stung by the refusal of Mordecai to bow down to him, Haman, the wicked prime minister, easily makes the big jump from a personal slight to a national policy of mass murder. Dice are thrown to select a specific date when the Jews in the Persian kingdom will be hanged. To achieve this monstrous goal, Haman has only to convince the weak and inept King Ahasuerus that Persia’s Jews are somehow disloyal to the realm. Many anti-Semites have frequently lied about Jews throughout history, but Haman represents something even more dangerous: an anti-Semite with enormous political power and the will to use it.

Ahasuerus, alas, is the quintessential ruler who is easily manipulated by forces stronger than himself. First, Haman convinces him that all Jews in Persia must die, an early example of genocide, but later in the Purim story Ahasuerus’ Jewish queen persuades her husband to rescind the deadly order in the nick of time. Esther intervenes only when she realizes that if Haman is permitted to carry out his anti-Jewish policy, even she, the Persian queen, will also hang from the gallows.

When Mordecai, her relative, makes this gruesome fact clear to her, Esther is spurred into action to oppose Haman’s evil plan. She is driven by both the power of self-preservation as well as the loftier sentiment of saving her people from death. Ahasuerus is seemingly influenced by the last person who speaks to him, and happily, in the Purim story, that person is Esther.


There have been many Mordecai figures in history; Jewish leaders who correctly grasped the extreme situation of their people, but tragically there have been few highly placed Esthers who were able to save their people from death and destruction.

Because of the deliverance from mass murder, Purim is celebrated each year with imaginative costumes, mysterious masks, joyous carnivals and exuberant partying. The megillah, or scroll of Esther, is read in the synagogue and when Haman is mentioned during the Purim service, jeers, cat calls and loud noise makers drown out the sound of the vile prime minister’s name. Even though more than 2,200 years have passed since the first Purim was celebrated, the Jewish fury and bitterness toward Haman, and by extension toward all anti-Semites, still remains.

Last summer Buford Furrow tried to kill children at a Los Angeles area Jewish community center, proudly calling his obscene action “a wake-up call to kill Jews.” Ronald Taylor who recently killed three people in suburban Pittsburgh also hates Jews. By deed and word, Furrow and Taylor have joined the long line of murderous anti-Semites that began with Haman in ancient Persia.

Sadly, Purim remains a throughly modern story.

DEA END RUDIN

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