Purim for grownups

Sara Horowitz

What child does not love Purim? It has costumes, pageantry, nosherei, merriment, not to mention a story with intrigue, carnivalesque reversals and larger-than-life characters – the buffoon king, the beauty-pageant-worthy Jewish princess, the puffed-up villain, first humbled then defeated. What’s not to love?

For adults, however, a darker edge sets in. There’s the text itself – a powerful leader led astray by a self-serving adviser governed by hatred, forced induction of young maidens into a large royal harem, a massacre of Jews barely averted, a massacre of enemies of Jews that extended an extra day. Then there’s the associated practice of drowning out the name of the villain in our ritual readings of Megillat Esther, linked with the biblical injunction to “blot out” zecher amalek – the memory or trace of the Amalekites, or Amalek.

The traditional Purim Megillah reading comes sandwiched between two Torah readings that contain a confusing injunction to forget. It seems to mandate both remembrance and its opposite. On the Shabbat before Purim, we read God’s command to the Israelites: “Remember what the Amalekites did to you… you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget” (Deuteronomy 25:17, 19). In the morning Torah reading of Purim, we read: “Inscribe this in a document as a reminder, and read it aloud… ‘I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heaven!’” (Exodus 17:14). 

Traditional readings of Megillat Esther offer a concrete example of the paradox of remembering to forget. Listeners use all manner of noisemakers to drown out the name of Haman when the reader chants it. Some people have a custom of writing the name Haman on the soles of their shoes, and wiping it out by walking. Think about it. To wipe out Haman’s name, we must first inscribe it. Like Amalek, the entity to be forgotten is called by name, anchored by our sacred texts and our ritual acts. The reader needs to chant the name aloud, and the listeners strain to hear it, so the barrage of noise can be launched at just the right moments. 

Rabbinic memory associates Amalek with individuals or peoples who act in gratuitously evil ways toward the Jewish people – seeing in Hitler, for example, a genetic or spiritual inheritor of the biblical prototype. Many rabbinic sources make clear that post-biblically, we’re not commanded to literally wipe out Amalek or any later nation we see as their genetic or spiritual inheritors. Over time, the idea of “blotting out” Amalek came to be understood either as an act deferred until the end of days, or else as a metaphor – a command to wipe out one’s own evil impulse, one’s yetzer hara. But the idea of Amalek contains also the whisper of genocide, the trace of trauma, the continued existence of gratuitous evil – in the world, and perhaps in ourselves. 

I think of the repeated cycle of naming and blotting out, inscription and erasure, as something akin to Freud’s concept of Fort-Da – the way a child makes objects disappear and reappear, to conquer the fear of abandonment or non-being. Similarly, on Purim we turn our fears and trauma into a child’s game that brings us to face what most chills us. In this way, perhaps, we are not paralyzed by it – nor are we seduced by it. 

Many contemporary Jewish thinkers suggest that erasing the trace of Amalek is accomplished by engaging actively with its ethical opposite. Amalek goes after the helpless and defenceless for the sheer pleasure of experiencing its own power. Negating that would entail accepting a special obligation to look out for the defenceless, to protect and assist the helpless. 

It seems clear that we are meant, at least at some level, to live with the memory of Amalek, which is also the memory of trauma. What else could we do but turn it into carnival?