A Purim Spiel: Fate, Chance and Philately

My family first joined a synagogue, the Compton Jewish Community Center, in September 1967. I knew nothing, not even the word “gornicht.” When March 1968 came around, I saw in the newsletter there was a holiday called “Purim” on the calendar. I asked what the word meant (saying it like “pure ‘em”), and I was told “Lots.” I thought “lotsa what?” But after my embarrassing mispronunciation, which identified me as a dilettante among the seventh-grade cognoscenti, I thought I would wait until someone actually told me what the holiday was a lot of. 

I later learned that the Persian word “pur” — pronounced like North Dakotans says “poor” —means “lots,” as in a lottery. In fact, the book of Esther tries to help here. In Esther 3:7, it says “pur, which is goral, were cast in the presence of Haman.” 

The book of Esther translates for us the Farsi word “pur” into Hebrew, “goral.” Once my Hebrew improved, I knew what “goral” meant: fate, or destiny. So “Purim” in English is “Fate.”

To understand why this holiday is called “Fate,” the backstory is necessary… Purim is a lottery (the holidays of lots, a game of chance) but the Hebrew word for the holiday means “Fate.” We insist on a name that suggests some unsettling mix of randomness or fate. How reassuring is that? How does one even celebrate randomness and fate at the same time?

To understand why this holiday is called “Fate,” the backstory is necessary. Haman was trying to find the most propitious day to exterminate the Jews, and so the “the pur were cast before him.” Think of “pur” as dice—they threw dice to find the lucky month and day on which Haman and his evil minions would attack the Jews. 

You can see the problem. A lottery is a game of chance. The winning number is random, we hope, not fated. Haman, however, was trying to find out his lucky number. “Lucky number” suggests there is some destiny involved. Purim is a lottery (the holidays of lots, a game of chance) but the Hebrew word for the holiday means “Fate.”  

How could this be that the Persian word for a game of chance is defined by the Hebrew word for destiny? Aren’t the ideas of “lotteries” and “fate” opposite? Something felt amiss. 

I later learned that the Hebrew word for a “lottery” is “hagralah,” from the word “goral,” “fate.” Who came up with this? Who oversees the Hebrew language?  It turns out there is someone in charge of the Hebrew language in Israel — a committee, actually, “Va’ad Halashon,” “The Language Committee.” I will expose my unfortunate correspondence with that committee when I write my Memo-Wars. 

Without any help from the ironically named and hopelessly confused Language Committee, I figured out how lottery and fate can be the same word: We typically think of a lottery as game of chance, but then after the lottery people might think that the outcome was fated, destined to be. Through the windshield, it looks random. In the rear-view mirror, it looks like destiny. Fate is what we see in the mirror. Somehow true. 

It is not satisfactory, however. I still find it odd: “Lottery” is translated as “Destiny.”

Before you throw the dice, it feels that the number on which they land will be a matter of randomness, chance. After the dice are thrown, depending on the outcome, someone may be called “lucky” — those numbers “were destined to be.” In a way, to assume that the dice will result in good luck for someone (and bad luck for someone else), or closer at hand, a propitious day for someone, but a catastrophe for another, gives us a sense that the game is rigged. 

Amended epigram: “Fate is what we see in the mirror, and the game is rigged.”

To summarize: Casting the “pur” (plural, purim) has a sense of both “chance” and “destiny.”

This semantic problem is probably why no one told me what “Purim” meant—it is not easy to explain a word that means two opposite things. 

This semantic problem is probably why no one told me what “Purim” meant—it is not easy to explain a word that means two opposite things. The interstices between those meanings, chance and fate, portend ominous existential implications. You can’t tell kids everything. 

With that now cleared up, I am sure you are asking how I know how North Dakotans pronounce the word “poor” (as in Puer Aeternatus, a Greek god who often makes his appearance at Purim celebrations). 

Prior to the movie “Fargo,” the only thing I knew for sure about North Dakota was that the capital was Bismarck (yes, named for Otto von Bismarck) and there is a city called Moscow there. That there should be a city in America named Moscow intrigued me when I was kid during the Cold War.

(I just checked the weather for Moscow, North Dakota, to see how cold it actually is there. It is 32 degrees F, but “feels like 22,” according to the website. Now that really intrigued me. Whom would they ask what it felt like there today? There are only 17 people in Moscow, North Dakota; I guess for that 17th person it feels like 22 degrees.)

Apparently, the city of Moscow, ND, just about emptied out after the U.S. Air Force dropped an atomic bomb on Mars Bluff, South Carolina on March 11, 1958. I think it was a Purim prank, even though the bomb was dropped a good five days after Purim. The Jewish calendar was as much a mystery then as it is now.

Since the bomb landed so many days after Purim, no one got the joke. Especially Walter Gregg, whose house it destroyed. The incident left deep scars on Gregg’s family. For example, his grandson Clark Gregg found a leading role in the TV show “Agents of SHIELD” (SHIELD meaning Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division) as a way to “shield” himself from further Atomic Bomb attacks. Very psychological. 

Anyway, back to Moscow, North Dakota. Seeing that, first, the U.S. Air Force had apparently no reluctance to bomb an American city just for the fun of it, and second, the US Air Force flubbed the date for Purim, the residents of Moscow, North Dakota assumed that the same Air Force might flub again and mistake Moscow, ND for Moscow in the USSR. And so they fled for towns with more propitious names, probably avoiding the nearby North Dakota cities of Dresden and Munich.

Anyway, the movie “Fargo” (which is where I learned how North Dakotans pronounce the word “poor” — just like the Persian word “pur”) is about many things including philately (an awful perversion in my mind even though I am pretty libertarian about people’s personal choices) and feeding bodies into woodchippers. 

The main thing, however, the linchpin of the movie and the turning point, is Mike Yanagita. Mike, you may recall, tells Marge, the sheriff, that his wife Linda Cooksey died from leukemia and that he has been despondent ever since. Sheriff Marge Gunderson, played by Frances McDormand, says “poor Mike,” as in “Purim”!  Get it?

It turns out that Mike is lying. He was actually never married to Linda; he was just stalking her. Sheriff Gunderson now realizes (and this is big for North Dakota, apparently) that people lie! She then puts it all together, and among other things happens upon Gaear feeding Carl’s body into the woodchipper, not as rare as lying but nonetheless unusual for North Dakota. 

Now what are the chances that Sheriff Gunderson, while in Minneapolis investigating the kidnapping case at the heart of movie, would agree to have dinner with disturbed stalker Mike, who just by chance happened to be in town, and then by chance the good sheriff discovers that Mike was lying, and thus inferring that the persons of interest in the kidnapping, the whole lot (!) of them, were lying? Wow! Not to mention her stumbling upon, by chance, the very moment when the woodchipper was being used in a manner very likely contrary to the warnings in the user’s manual. 

Here is the point in case you missed it. Why don’t we just translate the name of the holiday Purim? But we must decide. Shall we call it “Fate” or “Chance,” or “Fate/Chance,” or even better, “Rigged Destiny” or “Fat Chance”?

But why call it some version of Fate/Chance anyway? Is this story really about Haman throwing the dice? No. This story is about the Jews of Persia defeating evil Haman and his wicked crew. Perhaps we should call it Persian Jewish Victory Day, or PJV Day for short. 

Instead, we insist on a name that suggests some unsettling mix of randomness or fate. How reassuring is that? How does one even celebrate randomness and fate at the same time? And what, exactly, is being celebrated? Is it that life is random—nothing happens for a reason? That everything is predestined and there is no free will? No, I am actually asking. 

Give me an existential break! The idea makes me want to go out and get tipsy. Party to distraction. Read aloud to the drunken midnight choir weird, ancient stories about royal court intrigue and trot around incognito.

What are the chances that King Ahasuerus would choose Esther (you may know her as Hadassah), the one Jewish contestant, as his queen, thus allowing the Jews to reverse their fate to a different fate, and what does “fate” actually mean in that case?

I did some more thinking. What are the chances, first, that King Ahasuerus would choose Esther (you may know her as Hadassah), the one Jewish contestant, as his queen, thus allowing the Jews to reverse their fate to a different fate, and what does “fate” actually mean in that case?

Second, what are the chances that Haman would be strung up on the very gallows meant for Mordecai? Isn’t that a little too perfect?

That’s about as likely as Mike Yanagita and Sheriff Gunderson having dinner in Minneapolis and Sheriff Gunderson stumbling upon a realization leading to woodchippers and eventually a closing scene with Sheriff Gunderson in bed with her philatelist husband (I did have to close my eyes on that one). 

Maybe that is the basic exclamation point, that this mad, crazy holiday of Purim leaves us all hanging between chance and fate.

Mordecai Finley is Rabbi of Ohr HaTorah Synagogue in Mar Vista, CA.