CBI Blogs

Dear Ones,

As a Rabbi of nearly 40 years, I sometimes think of this time of year in the Jewish calendar as a snowball rolling down a hill, getting bigger and bigger, faster and faster, or as a runaway train with no brakes. Anybody who works in a synagogue would be able to relate to this sensation of accelerating busyness encapsulated in a rush of special days.

It starts with Purim in late winter or early spring, followed quickly by Passover, then all the “Yom’s”: Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom Ha-Sho’ah), Israel Memorial Day (Yom Ha-Zikkaron) and Israel Independence Day (Yom Ha-Atzma’ut). And then, we cross the finish line with Shavu’ot and, in many liberal Jewish congregations, the celebration of Confirmation.

The truth is, there are many connections between these special days, connections that often become lost in that sense of frenzied busyness, one holiday after another. But those connections are important.

Take, for example Pesach and Purim. Although the respective moods of these two holidays feel very different, they contain a common theme of escape from danger and liberation.

Obscured somewhat by the masks and noisemakers of Purim, the Book of Esther tells of an attempted genocide against the Jews of Persia. Those Jews are not saved through divine miracles, but rather through the courageous and cunning efforts of Mordecai and Esther. This point is underscored by the way that Mordechai cajoles Esther into advocating for her people before the King. “You may think that because you are safe in the royal palace and nobody knows you are a Jew, you will be saved from Haman’s decree. But like it or not, you are one of us, and you and your family will share the same fate as the rest of your people if you do nothing.”

In the Passover story, led by Moses and sheltered by God, our Israelite ancestors find salvation from another genocidal leader, this time, Pharaoh. But here the “takeaway” that the Torah repeats 36 times is different than what we might glean from the Purim story. Here, the lesson isn’t about “taking care of our own,” but rather, a universalist message about protecting all who are oppressed: “You shall not oppress a stranger, you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourself been a stranger in the land of Egypt.”

In a blog post from 2019, this led the Israeli writer and thinker, Yossi Klein Halevi, to coin the terms “Pesach Jews” and “Purim Jews:”

Jewish history speaks to our generation in the voice of two biblical commands to remember. The first voice commands us to remember that we were strangers in the land of Egypt, and the message of that command is: Don’t be brutal. The second voice commands us to remember how the tribe of Amalek [Haman was an Amalekite] attacked us without provocation while we were wandering in the desert, and the message of that command is: Don’t be naive.

The first command is the voice of Passover, of liberation; the second is the voice of Purim, commemorating our victory over the genocidal threat of Haman, a descendant of Amalek. “Passover Jews” are motivated by empathy with the oppressed; “Purim Jews” are motivated by alertness to threat. Both are essential; one without the other creates an unbalanced Jewish personality, a distortion of Jewish history and values.

One reason the Palestinian issue is so wrenching for Jews is that it is the point on which the two commands of our history converge: The stranger in our midst is represented by a national movement that wants to usurp us.

And so a starting point of a healthy American Jewish conversation on Israel would be acknowledging the agony of our dilemma.

Even though it was written some five years ago, I find this blog post urging American Jews to learn to speak openly about “the agony of our dilemma” to be possibly more relevant, after October 7, then it was when the author first posted it. You can find the entire piece here. I commended to you as well worth your time.

Let me close this blog with a personal invitation for you to join in our Purim festivities this weekend. Whether we ultimately find ourselves to be Purim Jews or Passover Jews, or in some shifting place between the two, there are far worse things we could do with our time then gathering with our community for some much needed singing, laughter and fun.

Wishing you a beautiful and restful Shabbat,

Rabbi Steve Folberg