Infinite Purim: Purim 5782

[dorchadas]

Yesterday and today is Purim (פורים, "lots" in the fortune-telling sense) and it's the first one since Purim 2020 that I've attended in person. It was even back at the Davis Theatre again, with the food out in the bar area, just like the first Mishkan Purimspiel I went to. The reader who did voices for the different characters was back!

sashagee couldn't make it. Even if we had found a babysitter, she was too sick to go, which was a bit awkward when the rabbi emailed me on Tuesday and told me how happy she was to see our names on the guest list after everything that has happened in the last few months. She found me at the party pretty early (I'm very easy to spot) and expressed her regrets for everything we had gone through this year so far. Then she gave me a hug.

The spiel was mostly pre-recorded video this year, and the real innovation is that it was a bunch of small skits put together with the aid of the Neo-Futurists, performers of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and Chicago's best theatre group according to TimeOut magazine! And also very Jewish, apparently--the reason this happened is that there were at least six or seven Neo-Futurists in the audience at the Purimspiel. My favorite short was the first one they played, a parody of Seasons of Love called "Married to Mishkan" about being the partner of a rabbinical assistant and the "525,600 emails" they have to deal with, but also shoutouts to "My Dad Blows It Again," about the father of the presenter who literally wrote the book on shofarim, "Shofar Sho'Scary" chronicling how the team tasked with recording Mishkan's 2021 Rosh Hashanah services did not bring a tripod (and thus a parody of The Blair Witch Project), and "Mishkan: Reloaded," which was a Matrix parody by the technical director and ended with:

"I am one with the livestream.

"I am the one.

"I am...אחד." (echad, "one")

There was also a lot less innuendo than in most years:

The one problem I had with the event was that they put out the dinner food before the Purimspiel, and the dessert food after...which meant that anyone like me, who's keeping Ta'anit Esther, couldn't eat any dinner food since the fast ended in the middle of the spiel. I grabbed a plate of a few things and brought it into the theatre, so my dinner was asparagus, mushrooms, a bit of salad, and cheese from the cheese plate eaten about halfway through the spiel, and then the hamantaschen from the goodie bags on the empty seats on either side. And then I walked three miles home because I missed the bus. Honestly, the walk was nice--I used to walk miles home alone at night all the time, back before the Plague Years when I had a full schedule and was out doing things all the time--but a full meal would have helped.

I did get flagged down by bunnydelfuego, who recognized me from running into me at last week's Shabbat services, and it turns out she and her partner live nearby! Maybe sashagee and her will get to meet soon like thedukelord suggested.

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For future reference, and if anyone is curious, here's some points from the traditional Jewish understanding of Esther's story that aren't necessarily obvious from a straight reading of the text (Heb: פשט‎ pshat).

• Esther Is Mordechai's First Cousin / Wife: The cousin is directly in the original text, which describes Esther as Mordechai's בת דדו (bat dodo, "daughter of his uncle"), but there's a popular conception that she was his niece. Even on Wikipedia, the Mordechai article says she was his niece but the Esther article says she was his cousin! Josephus indicates that she was his niece, and the Targum Rishon and Vulgate both take this interpretation as well, so niece isn't wrong so much as a minority position.
  
  As for the wife, this is in the Talmud:

  The verse states: "And when her father and mother were dead, Mordecai took her for his own daughter" (Esther 2:7). A tanna taught a baraita in the name of Rabbi Meir: Do not read the verse literally as for a daughter [bat], but rather read it as for a home [bayit]. This indicates that Mordecai took Esther to be his wife.
  -Megillah 13a

• Achashverosh Wanted Vashti to Dance Naked: This is also from the Talmud:

  So too, at the feast of that wicked man, Ahasuerus, when the men began to converse, some said: The Median women are the most beautiful, while others said: The Persian women are the most beautiful. Ahasuerus said to them: The vessel that I use, i.e., my wife, is neither Median nor Persian, but rather Chaldean. Do you wish to see her? They said to him: Yes, provided that she be naked, for we wish to see her without any additional adornments.
  -Megillah 12b

  Another explanation I've heard is that since the text indicates she was supposed to come wearing the crown (Esther 1:11), what is the significance of that? The crown is specifically called out because she was supposed to come wearing only the crown.


• Vashti Was a Terrible Person: There's a pretty common reading of Vashti as a feminist hero nowadays and I have no comment on that, but the traditional reading is that her being summoned to dance naked was a punishment for her sin of making her Jewish slaves work naked on Shabbat (Megillah 12b).


• Achashverosh Was a Terrible Person: Going with the "Mordechai and Esther were married" understanding, Achashverosh snatched her up to be one of his wives anyway. In addition, his territory is stated to be from India to Ethiopia (Esther 1:1), meaning essentially everywhere that Jews would have lived at the time, so the decree to kill the Jews in his lands that he blithely accepts would have been a total genocide. The Talmud also understands that when he offered Esther half the kingdom, this was explicitly the half that did not include Israel or Jerusalem.


• Mordechai Didn't Bow Because of Idols: There's no reason given for why Mordechai wouldn't bow other than the general Jewish concern around bowing toward anyone but G-d. Tanakh even writes that the king's servants asked Mordechai directly (Esther 3:3), but don't indicate his reply! One explanation is that Haman deliberately wore an idol on his person somewhere, so Mordechai did not bow to avoid the appearance of bowing to an idol:

  Was he contrary and violating the king’s decree? Rather, when Aḥashverosh commanded [everyone] to prostrate themselves to Haman, he [Haman] carved an idol [and set it] over his heart, intending that they prostrate themselves to the idol.
  -Esther Rabbah 6

• Haman Is the Consequences of Misplaced Mercy: Maimonedes writes in the Guide to the Perplexed that:

  Compassion towards the wicked – is cruelty to all beings.

  Judaism is big on repentance and compassion but recognizes that some people are beyond redemption and they must be killed without mercy. The reason Haman is called out as an "Agagite" is a reference to 1 Samuel 15:9, where King Saul captured King Agag alive despite the command to destroy the Amalekites, and thus centuries later his descendant Haman returns to plague the Jews.
  
  Incidentally, the reason to kill Amalek dates back to Exodus 17:8-16, and the sages specified that Amalekites attacked the women, children, and the infirm who lagged behind as the Children of Israel walked through he wilderness, and so eternal enmity was sworn. There's a lot of modern interpretations that read Amalek as "the evil inclination" that we all must work constantly to overcome, or the urge to atheism or the rejection of G-d.


• Haman Used to Be a Barber: There's no moral point here, I just think it's funny.

  It was taught in a baraita: Haman was the barber of the village of Kartzum for twenty-two years.
  -Megillah 16b

• Achashverosh Did Not Want to Accept Esther's Coming Unsummoned: In the story (Esther 5), Esther fasts and then approaches Achashverosh without being summoned to intercede for the Jews. The Talmud indicates that she had to pass through multiple rooms to reach him while the king's courtiers attempted both mundane tricks and even sorcery to stop her, and then end the angels had to intervene directly:

  Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Three ministering angels happened to join her at that time: One that raised up her neck, so that she could stand erect, free of shame; one that strung a cord of divine grace around her, endowing her with charm and beauty; and one that stretched the king’s scepter.
  -Megillah 15b

  I like the next part that mentions how the angels literally lengthened the scepter. Just imagine Esther walking into the throne room and suddenly the king is holding a thirty-foot-long rod towards her. The maximum length claim is 200 cubits!


• Ḥarvona Is Very Important: Ḥarvona is mentioned twice, in the list of palace guards at the beginning and in Esther 7:9 when he points out the gallows that Haman built to hang Mordechai on. Despite that minor mention, the song Shoshanat Ya'akov (שושנת יעקוב, "Rose of Jacob") ends with the line "and may Ḥarvona also be remembered for good." There are a variety of explanations for this--sometimes you just need an ordinary person to do one good action, Ḥarvona acted in the moment because he knew the king was impulsive, Ḥarvona was the Prophet Elijah in disguise--but none of them is the explanation. We just have to remember him.

I don't take a position on the morality of any of these interpretations--it's pretty obvious that they generally make the Jews shining heroes, the non-Jews despicable villains, and remove any nuance whatsoever--but they do exist.