News from Rabbinate

Purim

Many Jewish holidays are festivals of revelation, הִתְגַּלּוּת, as the Hebrew word itself preserves: holidays of disclosure, of uncovering.

But Purim is a strange kind of festival: almost a secular one, a weekday disguised as a holy day. It seems distant from sanctity - a festival of the body, of excess, of intoxication and unruly laughter. The Book of Esther is a text about politics, intrigue, and lobbying; about drunkenness and the lust for power. It is a text devoid of God and divinity, devoid of the assurance that God will save or redeem, even devoid of acts of faith.

Purim is something of an enigma.

And yet, a hint to its profound meaning lies in the costumes, in the central act of disguising.

In Hebrew, the word for “disguise”, הִתְחַפְּשׂוּת, contains the verb לחפש, “to search”. Even more than that: grammatically, הִתְחַפְּשׂוּת, Hebrew disguising, can be understood as the reflexive form of the root חפ״ש – i.e., an active process of searching. As if on Purim we are not merely wearing masks, but wearing search itself.

Suddenly, I begin to think of Purim as a festival of searching, in contrast to Passover, which is a festival of revelation and divine disclosure. On Purim, we celebrate the search and suspend the certainty of discovery.

What, then, is the difference between searching and revelation?

Searching is movement, continual movement. It knows there is no final certainty, no terminal point, no conclusive proof. Searching keeps us alert, attentive, and above all - open. It is an active act and an act saturated with responsibility. Not only the responsibility to search, but the responsibility to interpret, to recognize something as a hint, and to weave it into a larger fabric of meaning.

On Purim, the very same event can be coincidence, clever political maneuvering, or divine movement. When Mordechai says to Esther, “And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a moment” (Esther 4:14) - this is not prophecy, it is an invitation. An invitation to interpret the moment as more than a coincidence, as more than the natural and simple order of things.

The search always remains open and keeps us open. In searching, in taking responsibility for interpretation, we become partners in reality, partners in shaping it, partners in nourishing it with divinity.

In this way, miracles shift from dramatic interventions above reality to small moments in which our search becomes fruitful. Interpretation becomes the act of faith in a world of a disguised God, a world where God מְחֻופָּשׂ- in Hebrew, both ‘in disguise’ and ‘searched for’.

Purim is the festival in which we celebrate, examine, and practice this search. May we continue to celebrate it - not as a temporary state to be resolved, but as our way of living lives woven with divinity.