Purim

Purim, on the fourteenth of Adar, commemorates the deliverance recounted in the biblical Book of Esther: the frustration of a plot by Haman, minister of the Persian king, to destroy the Jews of the empire, through the courage of Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai, so that the day appointed for slaughter became a day of rescue. In walled cities such as Jerusalem it is kept a day later, as Shushan Purim, following the book's own account of an extra day of deliverance in the capital.

The book is unusual in the Hebrew Bible for never naming God, and this is theologically central to the festival rather than incidental: Purim is understood as the model of hidden providence, deliverance worked not by open miracle but through the seeming coincidences of ordinary political events, the "hiddenness" caught in the tradition that Esther's name is linked to a Hebrew word for concealment. Historically, scholars generally read Esther as a novella rather than a chronicle, and the festival's riotous, carnival character is unlike that of the biblically commanded feasts, which is part of its distinct place in the year.

The observance rests on four traditional duties. The reading of the Megillah, the Scroll of Esther, is heard twice, at night and in the morning, and at every mention of Haman's name the congregation drowns it out with groggers (noisemakers), stamping and shouting, so that the villain's name is blotted out. Then come mishloach manot, gifts of ready-to-eat food sent to friends; matanot la-evyonim, gifts to at least two poor people, so that the day's joy reaches those who could not otherwise share it; and the festive meal, the seudah.

Purim's tone is deliberately one of reversal and release: costumes and masks play on the theme of hidden identity, satirical "Purim spiels" mock the powerful, and a much-cited rabbinic dictum encourages drinking until one can no longer tell "cursed be Haman" from "blessed be Mordecai", a licensed inversion of the year's usual sobriety. Triangular pastries called hamantaschen ("Haman's pockets", or in Hebrew oznei Haman, "Haman's ears") are eaten. Falling a month before Passover, Purim is the most exuberant day of the Jewish year, and its themes of survival and the reversal of a decree of annihilation have given it added weight in modern Jewish memory.