Mendocino Coast Jewish Community

We read the Megillah (not this august publication, but its predecessor, the story of Esther from the Bible) cranking our groggers when we hear the tale of the evil henchman and the dumb king who over and over does his cruel bidding. Usually there is a Purimshpiel, the silly play that mocks whoever needs to be mocked. It is customary to be pretty tipsy while engaging in all of this, though this is somewhat controversial thing and certainly problematic for people who deal with alcoholism.

But then we take off our gorilla suits. We sober up and clean up and get to the more serious and wholesome business of preparing for Passover.

I’ve long seen Purim as the date on the festival calendar that holds space for revenge and schadenfreude, glee at the downfall of enemies. It is one day long. It both welcomes and contains rowdy behavior. Implicit in how we celebrate Purim is a kind of auto-critique: we make a burlesque of being commanded to do things we’re generally not permitted to do. “This isn’t how a proper Jew acts, except for tonight!” Tomorrow, tired and hung-over, we return to our higher selves.

I’ve taught about this before, so forgive me, please, for the repetition, but this year I find Purim both especially compelling and especially troubling. Never before have I felt myself, or heard expressed by others, more loathing for a departed administration or more exuberance at its termination—and especially that of its leader. It’s not so unusual, I guess, to wish that politicians you dislike will land up in jail. But I’ve never heard it or felt it so fervently much less seen it to be likely, and found joy in this.

I wonder… for people who see the world more or less as I do, maybe it would be superhuman not to desire a big public humiliation, comeuppance, payback for people we have seen cause so much harm and foment so much hatred. But what do we do with that very human impulse? I for one don’t want to make it the air I breathe for very long. I don’t want humiliation, comeuppance and payback to be my ongoing passion and preoccupation; I’d rather focus on healing, restoration and new life.

Some say—though not I—that comeuppance is justice. They say that it is necessary for the healthy functioning of our democracy that the cravenness of leaders is punished. I’m not questioning that need for punishment here. What I am questioning—not necessarily disowning, just gazing at—is my own pleasure in that prospect, my own hunger for retribution, not (just) because it is what democracy requires, but because it comes from a deeper, more hidden part of my own make-up.

At various hideous times in the past four years—when Neo Nazis marched in Charlottesville, immigrant children were detained behind wire fences, African-Americans were killed by police, the Capitol was invaded in early January—I heard people say something like, “Well it’s good to get all this awfulness up and visible. It’s like popping a boil. You have to let the pus drain out before it can heal.” I have wondered about that analogy. I have wondered whether these horrific events drained the pus or exacerbated the infection. I wondered whether they constituted a floor below which no one would want to go or whether they normalized violence.

All of which makes me question my long-held theory about Purim, which is that it is a useful container for the Jewish longing for revenge. Does telling the story of Ahasuerus and Haman and Esther and Mordechai drain the pustule of Jewish longing for the downfall of the enemy? Or does it celebrate that response?

I don’t know. I deeply don’t know, but we can’t have our usual mini-bacchanal this Purim anyhow, with our fun little nods toward schadenfreude. Maybe that’s a gift of COVID. On the night when ordinarily we would put on our costume, come to the shul and watch the shpiel or act in it, swing our groggers at Haman’s evil name, maybe take a little swig from Vashti’s Revenge,… what should we do instead?