Purim: The Study and Practice of Chaos
January 16, 2024
By Carol Felixson
The holiday of Purim doesn’t make a lot of sense, Rabbi Josh says. He thinks that many Jews don’t know what to make of it.
“God is absent from the Book of Esther,” he says, “and we have no independent historical corroboration that the story ever happened, even if it does tell a story that the Jewish people have experienced frequently.”
Nevertheless, Purim is one of his favorite holidays. He believes it is like dancing with, and inside, a state of chaos, which, when one gets to the other side, can bring a sense of freedom.
Some people liken Halloween to Purim. But, for Rabbi Josh, “Halloween is about fright, whereas Purim is about darkness and chaos and silliness and light.”
Reminiscing about his Purim costumes over the years, he chuckled. “I remember dressing up as my dog, Boychick, and as a Sith Lord,” he said.
He didn’t quite go as far as Darth Vader. “But,” he said, “I’m not ruling it out!”
He grew up to love Purim, even though it is hard to embrace, because it has a lot to offer us. He appreciates the chaos of turning things inside out.
“Or,” as he says, “transcending norms beyond what we can understand.” In his experience, Purim can be a “drink fest and an invitation to inebriation.” Up is down and down is up. You don’t know if Mordechai is bad or if Haman is good.
Rabbi Josh experiences Purim as a time to explore identities. “It is,” he says, “an opportunity for me to dance with a sense of destiny through the chaos rather than being steamrolled by it.”
Considering what chaos means to him, the Rabbi says, “it is a phase of reality, a spiritual accelerator, a destiny accelerator.” He gave the example of speeding in a vehicle.
"If you’re driving in a straight line,” he says, “eventually you lose the feeling of motion. But once you hit a curve, you feel the centrifugal force like a wallop. Chaos is the curves in life.” What will happen? You don’t know. That’s the power of Purim.
“Purim spiels are fun,” the rabbi says, “and deeply spiritual if one looks at them that way.” They present an opportunity to bring up troubling topics. People dress up in costumes, exhibiting their “shadow” sides and/or their potential identities.
“Everything is allowed except a lack of modesty,” he said about choosing a costume. He has witnessed very Orthodox Jews costumed as cross-dressers – and the next day they are back at yeshiva in their traditionally modest white shirts, black pants, coats, and hats.
“On Purim,” he says, “people have to learn to tolerate a style of dress, which in another context might be offensive.” Congregants often poke fun at the rabbi, the board, the president, and themselves. Enjoying a good laugh is a form of Jewish breathing.
“We all need to laugh at ourselves; that’s what makes us human,” he said with a big smile.
In 1987 when he was at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he learned a lot of mystical customs associated with Purim. He recalls a teacher standing on a table with a string of Kosher sausages pontificating on the mystical reasons for existence. Why? “It was a prank,” he says.
“Crazy ideas can be taken seriously,” he says, “or just considered crazy. On Purim, it can be hard to tell the difference. And that’s the point.”
The rabbi experienced time and again that, “at a certain moment, all became fuzzy.” When reading the Book of Esther, he says, one can read in a caricatured or funny voice but not so much with the Torah.
In 1991, when he was studying at Pardes in Israel, Purim marked the end of the First Gulf War in Iraq. He dressed up as an Iraqi Republican Guard soldier. He wore a coat and tie with a plastic sword (his idea of being republican at the time.)
There was a lot of trauma to work out, and Purim was the perfect forum. Some people came covered in the plastic of their “sealed rooms.” Others had duct tape and gas masks. They celebrated being able to make light of a very serious situation.
Over the years, Rabbi Josh had fun playing a Jimi Hendrix version of “Hatikvah” on his electric guitar. And as a Rastafarian, when he met people, he would say, “I’m “Hey Mon!”
Besides wearing costumes, listening to spiels, shaking noise makers, and booing every time Haman’s name is mentioned in the Book of Esther, Rabbi Josh says, “during Purim, we take care of each other. We are meant to be extra charitable.”
That can take many forms and necessitates paying attention to others’ needs on a personal, congregational, regional, national, and international basis. This is symbolized by the customs of giving charity and sending packages of food to one another through an agent.
For many in the religious community, there is a principle that, on Purim, if anyone asks for money, you must give them something, no matter what. Charity offers the needy glimmers of hope, and that is also what Purim is about.
“No matter what chaos swirls around us,” the rabbi says, “there is always the glimmer of hope that somehow things can get better.”
Now Jews are searching for a kernel of light in the current chaos and darkness of the Israeli war against Hamas. Rabbi Josh prays that “God bless us with peace and security one day soon.”
And we hope that Purim for Rabbi Josh and Jews around the world can once again be summed up by the comedian Allan King’s popular saying: “Our enemies tried to destroy us. We won. Let’s eat!”
Happy Purim!
Wed, May 8 2024 30 Nisan 5784
