Patrick Comerford
The Jewish holiday of Purim this year begins this evening (Thursday 13 March) and ends at nightfall tomorrow (Friday 14 March). This year is 5782 in the Jewish calendar, and Purim is celebrated on the 14th of the Jewish month of Adar, which falls sometime between February and March, about a month before Passover.
Purim is celebrated with joyous festivities: there are Purim carnivals for children and the young at heart, costumes, masks and plenty of tasty treats, Purim spiels or comic plays that retell the story of the Book of Esther, and dramatic readings of the megillah or Book of Esther, when every mention of the name of the villain Haman is drowned out with noise-making groggers.
The most famous baked treat for Purim is the hamantaschen, with a triangular shape to represent the villain’s hat and stuffed with a filling.
The ‘Purim spiel’ was widely used among Ashkenazi Jews as early as the mid-1500s and is said to be the origin of Yiddish theatre.
The Book of Esther and the Song of Songs are the only books in the Hebrew Bible that do not mention God explicitly. Traditional Judaism views the absence of God’s overt intervention in the story as an example of how God can work through seemingly coincidental events and the actions of individuals. But, in this divided and war-torn world, where are the parallels with Esther and Mordecai, Haman and King Ahasuerus, in global politics today?
In 1941, as Hitler’s army swept through Ukraine, razing towns and massacring Jews by the hundreds of thousands, four Jewish brothers in one village enlisted in the military to fight against the Nazis.
By the end of World War II in 1945, only one of those four brothers, Simon, was still alive. He returned to find that the Nazis had torched his entire village, burning his parents to death. The Nazis had murdered between 1.2 and 1.6 million Ukrainian Jews.
Simon married another Ukrainian Jew who had fled her city, where the Nazis had killed 5,000 Jews, and two years later, their son Oleksandr was born. That Oleksandr was, in turn, the father of Volodymyr Zelensky, now the President of Ukraine, and the survivor of survivors of the Holocaust.
When Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in 2019, Ukraine for the first time in its history had a president and a prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, who were both open about their Jewish background.
In a paper published on the site ‘Medium’ earlier this week, the American writer Neil Krasnoff discusses ‘Putin and the Purim Spiel in the White House’ and finds recent events including the attempt by Trump and Vance to humiliate Zelensky in the Oval Office are ‘eerily parallel to the Purim story.’
The name of the King of Persia, Achashverosh, is curious and Krasnoff points out that there is no historical Persian ruler by that name. He suggests the king is ‘an archetype of a leader that will again appear in history, and today we have President Trump, who exhibits many of the qualities of King Achashverosh.
He identifies these parallel characteristics as including, and I quote:
· He’s a buffoonish, impulsive, a ruler of an empire at its peak
· He divorces wives and remarries rather quickly
· Many of his advisors/officials/associates are misogynists and antisemites
· The key to getting what you want from him is being on his good side, and if you’re not, you’re doomed
· He switches sides on a dime frequently
The heroes of the Purim story are Esther and her guardian Mordecai. So, Krasnoff asks, ‘who in the modern day situation are Esther and Mordecai?’
‘Personally … I don’t really know who the Esther of our times,’ he writes. ‘However, I do have a firm belief is that Zelensky is our modern Mordecai’.
In the Purim story, Mordecai refuses to bow down to a king’s adviser, Haman, and in response Haman plants an idea in the King’s head to kill Mordecai and all Jews in the kingdom. Krasnoff writes: ‘Effectively JD Vance does this by asking the Ukrainian hero to bow down and when Zelensky refuses to do so, the King’s (Trump’s) anger is now focused on him and his people.’
‘At this moment, things do look grim for Ukraine, but we can find much hope in the Purim story.’
‘In my view, JD Vance fits the villain role perfectly’, Krasnoff asserts confidently. ‘Haman is a secretive, diabolical, scheming antisemite. He manages to frame his plot against the Jews in terms of the interest of the King, appealing to both his ego and sense of the National well-being. JD Vance has openly made his position clear, in that throwing Zelensky under the bus is in the National Interest, but has he revealed himself as an antisemite?’
Krasnoff’s answer to his own question ‘is a resounding yes’. He cites the open support Vance has expressed the far-right antisemitic AfD in Germany that is anti-immigrant, pro-Russia, anti-EU and seeks to wipe the Holocaust from public memory.
He adds that Trump ‘has several other associates and advisors that could also be the modern-day Haman, most obviously Elon Musk, who has endorsed idea that Jews are behind the White Replacement conspiracy and gone as far as giving the Seig Heil salute in public at the Trump inauguration.’
He also cites Steve Bannon’s anti-Jewish feelings and thoughts, Trump’s associations with Proud Boys and individuals such as Nick Fuentes, who are leading a resurgence in White Nationalism that is racist and antisemitic.
‘Today we live in perilous times of uncertainty surrounding the world-order, democracy and human rights. Most liberal thinkers are specifically worried about Donald Trump, but the Purim story offers reassurance.’
He concludes: ‘In Purim, we celebrate survival, victory and defeat of dark forces, and we have done so for thousands of years through all the ups and downs of history. May it be so again.’
Chag Purim Sameach, חג פורים שמח
