Spiritual Reflection, March 2022

The Challenge of Purim

For me, an Israeli Jewish Roman Catholic priest, celebrating Purim is a challenge. Purim marks victory over the evil Haman and the saving of the Jews from the massacre he planned, culminating in the massacre of the Gentiles. It too often seems a story of horrific vengeance. This challenge was sharpened when Baruch Goldstein gunned down 29 Muslims, wounding many more, as they prayed at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron on Purim 1994.

The challenge is to rethink the meaning of the feast despite the ominous shadows that Purim can cast. Here are my reasons to celebrate Purim, resisting its potential darkness:

1. Purim falls exactly one month before Pesach (Passover) as a preparation for it. Both underline the victory of God over tyrants, who believe that they are gods. Pharaoh and the Amalekite Haman have wreaked havoc. Both celebrations, steeped in blood, present the choices we are called to make between life and death, the life God wants for all God’s children or the death we often choose, blinded by sin.

2. Both celebrations recall the heroism of figures of great valor: Queen Esther in risking everything for her people and Moses, returning to Egypt to face Pharoah. Their self-sacrifice for the people they refuse to abandon, is supported by Mordechai and Aaron, uncle and brother, modelling the supporting roles in overcoming evil we too are called to fill.

3. In the Scroll of Esther nowhere is God’s name mentioned. The challenge is to read God’s presence between the lines (something the Greek version, in Catholic Bibles, makes explicit). Informed by the Pesach story, Purim is about distinguishing human passions from God’s love breaking through the evil that can engulf us all when we choose death over life.

David Neuhaus