Thread by @Delafina777

Hey, I wrote a thing about how Purim is a holiday that's all about releasing rage about oppression, and we should be leaning into that, and into imbuing it with contemporary political relevance, and into inviting people in people from outside our communities who need a release.

https://twitter.com/hey_alma/status/1106186914447667202

And you should read the article, because it's full of details and stories. Here's some info in bite-sized chunks because this is Twitter.

So on one hand, it makes sense, I guess, that Passover is the Jewish holiday most non-Jews have been invited to, if they've been invited to any Jewish holidays. It's The Big One, other than the High Holidays, which aren't terribly visitor-friendly.

(When I say the High Holidays aren't visitor-friendly, I don't mean that they're secret or private or about "Jews are great, everyone else isn't" or anything like that. It's that they're about some heavy-duty soul accounting, so they're not exactly *fun.*)

So I guess it makes sense that Passover is the one that people invite non-Jewish friends and family to. It's also a teaching holiday, so it makes sense to open it up, to show that part of your life to people you care about.

But at the same time, I'm not sure why it's NOT Purim, except that Purim is a less central holiday. It's so good though.

So, like, on one hand, you can absolutely just do Purim as "Jewish Mardi Gras." There is something both delicious and absurd about the fact that there's a holiday celebrating that time a teenage girl saved her community from genocide by winning a beauty pageant.

But it's also a lot more than that--it's a holiday that's all about throwing shade at a dude who probably never existed but even if he did he's been gone for like 3000 years. It's a cry of defiance, that whatever our circumstances, we will have joy and festivity.

But more than that, it's about, I dunno, not even hope but CONFIDENCE that we will bend the arc.

The rabbi asked last year, a few weeks before Purim, "how many tyrants have we outlived?" People started trying to do the math, until she pointed out that the answer is, simply, "All of them."

The earliest written (non-biblical) reference to the Jewish people is the stele of Merneptah, celebrating the destruction of the people of Israel.

Purim's all, "And yet, barely anyone remembers you, while here we are, having a giant party."

Purim is a waystation on the road into a world in which, perhaps, tyrants aren't completely forgotten, but in which we no longer live under their shadow, or the shadow of their memories. It's an assertion that even in their shadow, we won't give up opportunities for joy.

That we refuse to relinquish the freedom to celebrate--no matter what tyrants may do to us, they are not powerful enough to reduce our lives to nothing but survival, to take away our humanity and our ability to feel joy.

And I feel like, in 2019, when everything is awful, when every small bright spot in politics seems to come with six different terrible ones, when it can feel like there's no effective way to push back, we need that.

Hell, in 2019 when we're looking down the barrel of the end of the (human-inhabitable) world due to climate change, we need some sort of spark of hope that 3000 years from now, we'll still be around, and be able to laugh about it.

And for Jewish communities that are rich in hope, that have enough of it to share, maybe this is the year to invite in non-Jewish communities and people that are struggling with despair, to say, "we've survived all this, and you will too."

Anyway, if you're part of a community that's doing a good Purim party, maybe bring some non-Jewish marginalized friends along. And if you're not Jewish and lucky enough to swing an invite, GO PARTY IT IS GREAT & UNLIKE PASSOVER, YOU GET TO EAT MORE THAN PARSLEY IN THE FIRST HOUR.