Where Is God Hiding on Purim?

Grab your groggers, your mask, your costume: Purim is March 10. Often misleading and misunderstood, this outrageously raucous holiday comes in the last month of the year, Adar, fulfilling the much-needed expression of joy and feasting as the winter months come to an end. It is the culmination of a yearlong expression of emotion, spiritual enlightenment and our relationship to God, which begins in the first month of the year, Nissan, with Passover. 

Passover and Purim begin with the Hebrew letter peh, which means mouth. Both these holidays of remembrance “speak” loudly of the Jewish challenge for survival in a non-Jewish world. What begins in the darkness of Egypt, entrenched in slavery and the fear and hatred of the powerful Pharaoh, ends in the foreign land of Persia, in exile again, with the evil presence of another enemy, Haman. What begins with liberation from slavery by God’s awesome acts of wonder (Ten Plagues and splitting the sea) and protective moments of intervention (killing Pharaoh’s soldiers), ends without one word about God. Throughout the year God’s truth, teachings and historical connection demand our attention and yet we come, full circle, to a holiday where God’s name is missing and it is wo/man’s presence and actions that save the day. 

We learn from the beginning of Torah that evil exists in the world. It begins with the serpent who tries to separate Eve from Adam, and both of them from God, then all the many peoples we battle in Torah and, finally, the individuals with power, the continuing line of Jew haters beginning with Amalek, the one who came from behind to annihilate the people on their way to the land; and those that follow — Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Catholic crusaders, English, French, Spaniards, Russians, Germans, Iranians, etc. The Purim story represents one of those moments when one man, Haman, in his arrogance and hatefulness, plots to annihilate all the Jews. The two main Jewish characters in the story, Mordecai and Esther, personally and politically intervene and everything turns on its head. The gallows that Haman prepared for Mordecai ironically becomes the place where Haman’s life ends. 

This is a resolution without God’s intervention. It is a reminder that “we,” God’s partners, must fully engage in resolving conflict, difficulty and assure Jewish longevity. Mordecai and Esther use their spiritual practice to bolster their actions — fasting, grieving, crying out — but rely on their wit and wisdom to save their people. 

We come, full circle, to a holiday where God’s name is missing and it is wo/man’s presence and actions that save the day.”

Although God’s name never appears in the story, the rabbis remind us that what is not seen isn’t necessarily absent. They turn to a passage at the end of Torah, “Anochi haster asteer panai bayom hahu,” “I, the Lord, will surely conceal my face on that day.” In fact, the word “asteer” with different vowels, means “Esther.” The mystics see her as a representative of the feminine aspect of the Holy One, Shechinah, and Mordecai the representative of the male aspect of the Divine, Kadosh Baruch Hu. Together they enact, in this world, the Divine presence. God’s name may be missing but the wisdom and spirit of divinity are ever present.

The book ends, disturbingly, with the Jews vengefully killing thousands of Persians, “They wreaked their will upon their enemies.” On Purim, we are to get so drunk that we can barely tell the difference between Mordecai and Haman. For me this is a message of how easy it is to become like our oppressors.

The book of Esther reminds us we are representative of the Holy One and it is our task to express, through our actions and speech, sacred moments and Divine presence. We begin the year with gratitude for God’s gift of liberation but we end the year expressing joy and celebration in our freedom, remembering it is in our hands now. The rabbis teach that this holiday will remain with us in the days to come; ”These days should be remembered and celebrated … their remembrance shall not perish.” Perhaps they wanted us to maintain an awareness, of how easy it is to go from humility, joy and pride to arrogance, self-importance and revenge, even until today.

Eva Robbins is a rabbi, cantor and author of “Spiritual Surgery, Journey of Healing Mind, Body and Spirit.”