Third-Wave Feminists, Opponents of the Death Penalty, the “Ban Sugar in Schools” Movement, Esperantists, Religious Inclusivists and Other Internationalists of Various Allegiances—poor old Purim has a pack of enemies gunning for her in this holy Jewish year of 5779. And who could not agree with a lot of them? More than one critic has suggested that Judaism could do without this problematic holy day, or at least demote it to a time of somewhat guilty nostalgia. But to condemn Purim to irrelevance is truly to miss what seems to be its secret message.
That message has to do with the role of apparent coincidence our lives. In fact, scholars have rightly suggested that coincidence is the true motor force behind the whole Purim narrative in the book of Esther. If Queen Vashti hadn’t refused to make an appearance at the Shushan festival; if someone other than Esther had been chosen as Vashti’s successor; if Mordechai hadn’t somehow gotten wind of an attempted coup against King Ahasuerus (and if Mordechai’s role hadn’t subsequently been recorded in the royal records); if the king hadn’t suffered from insomnia that night…
Any one of these “if nots” could have made the story turn out quite differently. And yet, as numerous commentators have observed, there is no explicit mention of God’s role in the whole affair. It’s as if the whole thing had happened by chance.
This in itself seems to be no coincidence: modern scholars have shown that the Old Greek (“Septuagint”) version of Esther, along with the (apparently pre-Masoretic) “Alpha Text” of the story, make ample reference to God’s role in the events’ unfolding. This suggests that references to the divine were deliberately kept out of our present Hebrew text—as if to say, “Sometimes, the role of God goes unrecognized, and the miraculous doesn’t seem to be that at the time it occurs.”
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It all reminds me of the story of a fellow who had a vivid nightmare. In his dream he was traveling on a ferryboat in the Greek islands when the boat suddenly overturned in the middle of the sea; he and all the other passengers were drowned. The last thing he heard was a divine voice calling to him, “Repent before it is too late!” Waking up, he didn’t repent, but he did resolve never to find himself anywhere near Greece or ferryboats, just in case the dream was some sort of warning.
Several years passed and the fellow decided he really deserved a vacation—the French Riviera seemed like the ideal spot. But when he went to consult his travel agent, he was told that France was particularly expensive that year. “You’d do much better to choose a place like Greece,” the agent said. Greece! The very word brought a shudder to the man’s lips, but the travel agent assured him that flights to Greece were quite safe—and of course involved no Greek ferries.
On the day of his flight everything began well, but there was a problem at the Athens airport, and the plane was forced to make an emergency landing on the Greek island of Santorini. The man tried to arrange a flight to the mainland, but all flights were booked solid. “Why not take the ferry?” the airline official suggested. Now the man was extremely reluctant, but a dream is just a dream, he reasoned, and the ticket agent at the ferry’s pier dismissed all his misgivings. “The trip lasts only a couple of hours, and it’s perfectly safe. In fact, this particular boat you’ll be on is brand new, the weather forecast is for calm seas, and besides, we haven’t had the slightest emergency in over fifty years in business.” Reassured, the man bought a ticket and climbed aboard.
As soon as the boat was in open waters, however, the sea suddenly turned stormy, the ferry began to list badly, and it now appeared quite possible that the vessel would capsize. In a panic, the man lifted his voice to heaven: “O Lord,” he said, eyeing the other passengers on the boat, “I know I’m a terrible sinner, and I didn’t repent despite Your warning. But will You sacrifice all these other people just to punish me?” From heaven immediately came the response: “Do you know how much planning and arranging it took for Me to get all you people together on the same boat?”
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Which brings me to the blessing that we recite before reading the book of Esther on Purim. The blessing praises God, who “performed miracles for our ancestors in those [ancient] days in this season.” The word translated as “season” has a somewhat wider range in biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew: “time,” “appointed time,” hence, sometimes, “festival.” But in the context of Purim, the sense seems clear: “Long ago, it was at this time of year” (specifically, in the month of Adar) “that God performed miracles for our ancestors.” A straightforward, historical assertion about the past.
But there is another version of this blessing recited in some communities at Purim —a version different by one letter, the letter vav. It thus praises God who “performed miracles for our ancestors in those days and in this time.” That one little letter converts a statement about the past into a hope for the present and future. Coincidences certainly seem to occur sometimes, but considered from a certain perspective, things are not always what they first appear. In fact, a little vav can change a person’s whole outlook.
A Happy Purim!
