The Audacity of Purim – Finding Joy in an Unfinished Story
Dear fellow members of Harvard’s Jewish community,
I hope my message finds you, and those you love, well.
It is intuitive to see Purim as arriving one month before Passover. The structure of the Jewish calendar says something close to the opposite: Nisan, the month of Passover, “is the first of the months” (Exodus 12:2) – inaugurating a year which culminates eleven months later with the final month of Adar.
This arc is not only chronological, but developmental and theological. The Jewish year begins and ends with contrasting stories of salvation, and the path between them traces the growth of a human life. At Passover the Jewish people, like children dependent on their parents, are redeemed by G!?d’s mighty hand and outstretched arm, which defeats Pharoah’s army and guides them through the sea and the desert. Our liturgical year ends with Purim: Mordechai and Esther as fully wrought adults adequate to the risk and contingency of the world, wielding their courage, wit, and power to save themselves and our community – and G!?d, like our parents late in our lives, present as a guiding memory, but not as a character in the plot.
So it is all the more striking that Adar, the season of confronting the risks of this world head-on, is the time of an “increase in joy.” The paradoxical faith that the path to joy runs through confronting, rather than evading, the precarity of life, may be one of Judaism’s most remarkable spiritual lessons. This is, after all, why we shatter a glass at Jewish weddings: audaciously asserting that the joy of each young couple, and the integrity of the home they will build, transcends any and every darkness in this world.
Purim’s lesson is not that we will never face risks – because we will. It is not that someone or something will always come to protect us from that which would harm us – because sometimes, we will face these threats alone. Purim teaches us that we are equal to everything we will face – that our capacities are adequate to outwit and overcome the turbulence and cruelty of this world. To take in and live this truth is not to live without fear, but to live with courage, seeing whatever the Jewish people face now as another chapter in the never-ending story of Esther and Mordecai, reincarnated in us, in each generation. As the Talmud puts it, “We are still the servants of Ahashverosh”: the politics of contingency, of acquiring and utilizing power sufficient to outwit and outmatch our foes, is not a Biblical story of the past, but the blueprint of Jewish politics for the present and future.
Last week, Harvard’s Jewish community – and the unfolding legacy of Harvard Hillel – made this idea real in a contemporary, forceful way. Professor Jim Loeffler, a distinguished Jewish historian and alumnus of Harvard College whose pursuit of scholarship on behalf of the Jewish community was decisively shaped by the pluralism he encountered at Harvard Hillel, spoke at the law school. The talk, hosted by Professor Noah Feldman (for whom Harvard Hillel was equally formative) unearthed a critical moment in American Jewish and legal history—a key chapter in the unfolding story of Purim.
The story is the Englewood Race Riot: four-days of an angry mob surrounding and threatening the home of Aaron Bindman and his family. What started with 10 suspicious men grew the next day to 200 throwing rocks, then 1,000, and by the fourth night – 10,000 rioters. A police captain, asked why his force was not intervening to protect the Bindmans, replied, “Because they’re Communists.” When asked, “How do you know they’re Communists?” He replied, “Because they’re Jews.” The mayor refused to acknowledge the incident for two weeks – and when he did, characterized it as a false-flag incident staged by left-wing agitators.
The American Jewish community, like Mordechai and Esther before them, did not sit idly by. Joseph Beauharnais, an instigator of the riot, was charged with violating an Illinois statute that prohibited libel not only against individuals, but against groups – in this case Jews (and also African Americans, another target of Beauharnais’s activism). The law itself was the product of the early efforts of the ADL a generation earlier – which had been founded with the express purpose of passing anti-defamation laws. Beauharnais was convicted, with his case, Beauharnais v. Illinois, going all the way to the US Supreme Court. In 1952 the court decided against him, upholding the Illinois law, in a 5-4 decision written by Felix Frankfurter.
Beauharnais has never been overturned – and provides an illuminating and under-utilized point of reference in the debates about the boundaries of free speech that have roiled Harvard for the past 18 months. Loeffler’s lecture delivered exactly the kind of shock one yearns for in academic learning: how was it possible that none of the countless articles I have read – not to mention conversations and arguments I have participated in – about Title VI, and “From the River to the Sea,” and the differences between academic and political freedom of speech, and on and on – this case and its holding of the existence of a legally prohibited category of group libel, had never been a reference point, much less the basis of our thinking?
As that shock wore off, I realized something more: here we were, the creatively courageous heroism of Purim alive and well, fending off Hamans within living memory here in America. My grandparents and their families lived through anti-Semitic mobs threatening civil order, mobs whose nature and purpose was whitewashed by prominent politicians – and not only did we survive, but so did American democracy. The fears, the stakes, and even the specifics of some scenarios, are neither new nor unprecedented.
Nor are our ways and means of response: laws that Jewish groups had brought into being, and brilliant and principled Jewish jurists, were among the heroes of Beauharnais, just as they were in the Megillah. A new realization set in: Loeffler, in an HLS lecture room on a Tuesday afternoon, was doing the spiritual work of Purim – reminding us that we have faced strong opponents, and have proved ourselves stronger, again and again – and will do so again and again, now and always. The rearing of another generation of Jews who listen to the Megillah in college – and from it, are inspired to write the next chapter of our people’s history, unearthing and inspiring the next generation of brilliant and steely Jewish life – is happening right here at Harvard Hillel today. In 2055, the next generation of Jews will find inspiration and guidance from the students at Hillel, celebrating Purim, tonight.
So tonight, I invite you to join the Jewish tradition, and the community that is celebrating on campus, and live Purim’s truth: that we can laugh, and dance, and make merry, knowing not that things will be easy (because they will not be), but that we will find a way to prevail. And – in the sweep of Jewish history, we must resist being drawn into a defensive crouch – but we need to laugh, and to sing, and to drink, and to lose ourselves in fun. If the Jews of Harvard can do it, so can you – we are in this for the long haul, and we refuse to let the world’s darkness dim our joy, our confidence, or our trust in ourselves and one another.
In a world every bit as capricious and unpredictable as Achashverosh’s Susa, Purim’s message is radical indeed. It invites us to find our swagger, to laugh in the face of uncertainty, and to create joy not because the story has ended happily, but because it never will end.
Purim sameach,
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein
Executive Director
Harvard Hillel