Milk and Honey, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

March 15, 2014 Martha Thomases 7 Comments

It’s Purim!  One of my favorite holidays, I recently described it to someone as a mash-up of Halloween and Mardi Gras.  Children and adults dress up like their favorite character in the biblical Book of Esther.  It’s a story with villains to hiss, heroes to cheer, and lots of occasions to make noise.

As that description might imply, I consider it to be the gayest Jewish holiday.  For one thing, it stars a queen.  For another, those costumes I mentioned above often encourage cross-dressing, even in the most staid of families.  Purim is a time to rejoice in your own true self.

I’m hardly the only person to come up with this perspective.  There is already at least one children’s book on the subject of being gay and celebrating Purim.  Naturally, not everyone agrees.  Aside from the broader culture war playing out among liberals and conservatives, tolerance and fundamentalism, hedonists and Puritans, you will always find Jews eager to split hairs, especially about how to interpret sacred texts.  They don’t call us the People of the Book for nothing.

Because I’m on the liberal, tolerant hedonist side, I was happy to see this recent blog post by former Congressman Barney Frank.  He uses the occasion of Purim to urge Jews (and you, too) to stand up against the recently passed, hellish laws in Africa.  To quote:

“At Purim, we remember the story of a small group of people rising up to defend themselves after being demonized, abused and threatened with annihilation by Haman, the evil Persian minister. This story should move us to reassert our determination to respond to Hillel’s second mandate.”

By a happy coincidence, Purim and St. Patrick’s Day happen at the same time this year.  We’ll have a chance to compare how Jews and Irish people party.  it’s an awesome opportunity to compare reality to stereotype.  Will there be more drinking in Irish bars or Jewish bars?  Are there even Jewish bars?

What about cookies?  I’ll take hamentaschen over Irish shortbread any day.

It would be fabulous if we could compete on tolerance and diversity as well.  I’d like to see everyone try to be the people who get the most joy out of our differences.  At least so far, my people are winning this one, at least in terms of the specific holiday.

Unfortunately, when we get away from this specific comparison, there is far too much bigotry to go around.  Maybe we need more holidays.  We certainly need more costumes.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases is celebrating this Purim in Israel.