The Whole Megillah, in the Biblical Sense

A long time ago (like a zillion years ago) in a far away place (Brooklyn -- need I say more) Purim was a holiday we Hebrew School kids celebrated by sitting through some incredibly long and boring story (the megillah) and waving incredibly obnoxious (even to our young ears) noisemakers every time we heard the bad guy's name. No presents, no secular school vacation, not even a hint of chocolate in the pastries that were supposed to resemble either the bad guy's hat or his ears, depending on the bakery I suppose.

Outside of a vague recollection of a murdered queen, a good, strong and righteous nice Jewish girl turned replacement queen, a king who was putty in her hands, a nice but poor Jewish uncle, and a really bad man who, naturally, hated Jews, I don't really remember the specifics of the story. My guess is it's pretty garden variety fare: a Jew who nobody knows is a Jew manages to convince a likable but kind of clueless gentile to take a stand and pretty much save every other Jew in the universe. We remember (theoretically), we fast (theoretically), and we are reminded, as we often are, that lots of folks throughout the ages have wanted to kill us, and not just because we control Hollywood and vote Democratic.

Back to that time long ago in that place far away  (Brooklyn circa 1960's, not Persia circa biblical times), hardly anybody dressed up in costume for Purim. Occasionally, when the Hebrew School staff was feeling energetic, they put together a Purim play, which meant at least two lucky girls got to dress up as queen, although one would have to play dead. And one extroverted boy would get to dress like a scoundrel and act like a psychopath, much to his own delight as well as the delight of his parents. The rest of us just sat in the audience and endured. We Jews do that well -- we've had a lot of practice. And the really pious among us would put together baskets of seasonal delicacies, theoretically for the poor but often for the neighbors. It's always nice when religious observances involve some sort of giving, even when the folks on the receiving end aren't particularly needy.

Fast forward to Midwestern suburbia circa late twentieth century, when Purim had somehow become a Jewish Halloween. All day carnivals at temples, kids in Jewish neighborhoods everywhere dressed up in the finery of ancient royal kingdoms. Candy getting tossed around with abandon, sugar overload keeping children and their weary parents sleepless, all in the name of assimilation. No need to reconcile participation in a uniquely American type of festivity rooted in heathen tradition with ones Jewishness. A new early spring holiday seemed to have been born: Challah-ween, perhaps.

None of this has been too hard to swallow, even for a cynical and aggressively non-observant Jew like me. But apparently Purim has evolved much more completely than it has here in midwestern suburbia, in, of all places, Israel. I read an article today about Purim in Tel Aviv, that bastion of secular Judaism where Jewish identity and nationalism is, nonetheless, as powerful as it is in the plaza alongside the Western Wall. There was no mention in the article of ancient kingdoms and Jew-haters and hard working Jewish uncles in rags. It was all about the Purim parties, costume parties that would put any American Halloween party to shame. The goal in commemorating Purim, according to the article, is for women of all ages to get decked out in the sluttiest, sleaziest, most revealing and most sado-masochistic outfits they can squeeze themselves into. The men? Well, I'm not sure what they do other than show up, but I didn't see any mention of complaining.

Does this signal the decline of civilization, or at least the decline of Judaism as we know it? Despite the appalled comments at the end of the article, I doubt it. I grew up a captive audience to an annual megillah reading and sporadic Purim plays and vile pastries called Hamantashen and probably know less about the origins of the holiday than your average dominatrix at a Tel Aviv Purim party. I certainly live, day to day, with fewer reminders of how that kind of history tends to repeat itself.

Slutty? Who gives a shit? It's not like they're throwing naked orgies in temple social halls. As far as I know. And if you read the story of Purim carefully, any Bible story really, it seems to me civilization hasn't really declined that much at all in the last two thousand years, spiked heels notwithstanding.