{"id":10168,"date":"2006-03-13T15:42:43","date_gmt":"2006-03-13T20:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2006\/03\/13\/10168.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:54:47","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:54:47","slug":"the-whole-megillah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2006\/03\/13\/the-whole-megillah\/","title":{"rendered":"The whole megillah"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I always have trouble with Purim. With the holiday, I mean, not with the pur<\/I> themselves. Speaking of which, is it unusual to have a plural noun as a holiday name? If I were speaking in Hebrew (which, thank the Lord, I am not) would I need to say that Purim are<\/I> a spring holiday? And I know, that’s not the way that Hebrew works, lacking the verb to be, but would I need to set my nominate in the plural to agree? Or a verb, if I were to say that Purim dawns foggy<\/I> or Purim dawn foggy<\/I>? Of course not, the noun Purim<\/I>, meaning the holiday, is a singular noun that happens to sound the same as the plural form of the noun that means, essentially, a lottery ticket (most translations still seem to use the archaic word ‘lot’ rather than the back-formation, for reasons which I’m sure are valid and whatnot). Heck, for all I know, there’s an Israeli national lottery called Purim, and it takes a singular.\n

Anyway.\n

My real trouble with Purim is with the book of Esther<\/a>, and with the celebration of it. I mean, yes, there are entertaining bits, and it’s certainly a memorable<\/I> story, but in terms of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves to define ourselves, it’s a bit ... horrible<\/I> ... to have an ending where we slaughter seventy-five thousand people outright. Yes, they were “enemies”, but it’s certainly unclear that any of those “enemies” were actually planning to murder Jews, and even if so, they didn’t actually murder any Jews, nor were they taken in the attempt, but rather in a preemptive attack. Yes, Esther and Mordechai are all right (well, I have problems with how they behave, but no more so than, say, Rachel and Isaac), but the story doesn’t end with them. Unless you cheat, as I do, and leave off the bit about seventy-five thousand murders.\n

Another problem with the Purim story is that it typifies the Jewish Question. That is, the idea that was very popular in anti-Semitic circles in the early part of the last century that Jews could never properly be citizens of wherever they happened to live, because their first allegiance was always to Jews. This is one step away from the Sekrit Conspiracy of Bankers, Newspapermen and Movie Moguls, but it’s a small step. Now, in the story itself, there’s no question that what Haman proposes would be Bad for Persia, and so the conspiracy to destroy him is Good for Persia. There’s no conflict between being a Good Persian and being a Good Jew, on its merits. On the other hand ... the Queen is Sekritly a Jew, and conspires with her fellow Jews to overthrow the duly appointed government (the Grand Vizier or Prime Minister or whatever “above all princes” means), using trickery if not treachery, using sex and good food and all manner of blandishments to bamboozle the king.\n

In other words, the book of Esther seems to me peculiarly well-suited to provide persuasive fodder for the enemies of the Jews. Now, I can’t blame the book for that, as it’s the enemies of the Jews who are to blame. I can’t blame the book for a sense among Jews that we are set upon in every generation, as it is the people who set upon us in a fair number of generations that are to blame. But still, the combination of the use the book has been put to with the moral problems that are in the book itself combine to make me very uncomfortable with it.\n

Honestly, I’d prefer to just get on with the drinking and the cross-dressing and the little triangular cookies, and leave the story alone.\n

Ah, well. Happy Purim, Gentle Readers all, and drive safely (or not at all).\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I always have trouble with Purim. With the holiday, I mean, not with the pur themselves. Speaking of which, is it unusual to have a plural noun as a holiday name? If I were speaking in Hebrew (which, thank the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripture"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17708,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10168\/revisions\/17708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}