Purim is almost here. Have you got your costume yet? Your mask? Your atomic noisemaker?
Yeah, I’m talking to you. Mom, Dad, Gramps, Bubbe. Not the kids — you with the coffee cup in your hand!
I understand your confusion. Purim is the premier pediatric Jewish observance in America. The tots are adorable as Esther and the king, parading around at the synagogue Purim carnival, lining up for their tickets, ring toss and trinkets. Cute, cute, cute. Also wrong, wrong, wrong.
Call me Scrooge-ish, but I gotta say it: Purim is wasted on the young.
For one thing, they just don’t need it as much as we do. “Toddlers laugh 5,276 times a day; grownups fewer than six times a day” — I’m sure you’ve seen this statistic. The science behind the numbers may be of dubious origin, but the message sure rings true. Purim is Judaism’s attempt to correct this miserable imbalance — at least for one day.
Besides, Purim did not start out as a kiddie holiday. Take a look at the Book of Esther, for crying out loud. A bawdy burlesque that deserves an R-rating for its depiction of drunkenness, harem sexuality and violence.
And then there’s the fact that we’re supposed to get falling-down, drooling stupid drunk on Purim. So drunk we can’t tell the difference between Henry Hyde and Barney Frank. Purim means it’s OK to gamble, too. The word purim means “lots” as in “What the heck, let’s bet the whole lot on red.”
Purim has room for cute kids, but it also requires the grownups to cavort and giggle. To sing “Adon Olam” to the tune of “I’ve been Working on the Railroad.” To read Mad magazine from the bimah. To look up the jokes in the Talmud — Bava Batra 23b and Berachot 8b. I kid you not.
Best of all, ladies and germs, all this foolishness is the stuff of religious devotion. Once a year, Purim comes along to tell us stop posing as a nation of priests, to wipe the smirk off our collective faces and replace it with an idiotic grin. Get down and boogie with You-Know-Who, Who certainly digs Purim. How else do you explain the belief that Purim will be the only holiday celebrated after the Messiah arrives and redeems the world. Not Yom Kippur. Not even Passover.
This is very good news. I’ve often wondered if redemption would be, well, boring. God must know we need to keep laughing at ourselves, no matter what. And if Purim is a keeper in this world, maybe the World To Come (HaOlam Habah) will turn out to be a friendly asylum staffed by the Marx brothers, assisted by the likes of Molly Picon, Henny Youngman and Lenny Bruce — whose collective memory is a riot.
This is serious nonsense! If your rabbi doesn’t deliver a creditable sermon on Yom Kippur, your rabbi will probably get the boot. Likewise, if your rabbi doesn’t do a disreputable funky chicken on Yom HaKippurim, your rabbi ought to get the hook.
Slip that seltzer bottle up your sleeve. Put on your high-heeled sneakers. Take my tsuris, please.