Some Shushan Purim Thoughts

I'm actually typing this after the end of Shushan Purim but I thought of what I am writing below during the minor festival itself. For those of you who don't know, Purim is celebrated on the 14th of the month of Adar, except for cities that were walled at the time of Joshua in the Bible which celebrate on the next day. Any of you who want to brush up on Purim observances should click on the link.

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My dear friend Racheley mentioned that her son in law would be reading the Megillah on Shushan Purim this year using the melody used when chanting the Book of Lamentations. I was so moved to hear that on this Purim which is filled with so much worry and sadness.

In my life Shushan Purim is usually marked by very little. It doesn't require much more than noting that it exists.

Today though, I put on a playlist of old Purim music and mused about the holiday as I worked. I kept thinking about how unlike the rest of the holidays on the Jewish Calendar it is a holiday about life in exile outside of the land of Israel.

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Chanukah is a holiday where the religious fundamentalists win over the assimilationists. You can do a bit of reading about the Maccabees--trust me it is more complicated than they told you in Hebrew school .

Purim celebrates redemption that is possible because of assimilation. Esther marries a guy who isn't Jewish and that allows the Jews to be saved. Mordecai isn't a rabbi or a scholar, he is a guy with a government job.

Purim is the holiday that celebrate all of us who are Jewish and living in places where we are a minority.

Each of the other holidays in the Jewish calendar have an element that we can't fully participate in because the temple was destroyed or because we don't live in Israel. Purim is a celebration of Jewish life in the diaspora.

Crypto Jews who had to hide their jewish identity looked to Esther as a role model of how to be Jewish in your interior and present an exterior that works for the society that you live in. The Crypto Jews of Portugal used to refer to Esther as Holy Saint Queen Esther.

For us too, living in western Societies, Esther is a role model for how to navigate western society while being deeply Jewish.