The Masks We Wear-and Remove - on Purim
Purim Sameah!
Purim has always felt dizzying to me.
Not because of the wine—turns out, if you don’t learn to enjoy drinking at the right age, there’s no remedial course later. And not just because of the logistics—though, let’s be honest, the expectations seem to multiply every year. The pressure to outdo last year’s mishloach manot, to create ever-more-elaborate children’s costumes—it can feel like a lot.
But for me, Purim’s dizziness runs deeper. It’s theological. There’s something unsettling about the gap between our joyful, child-friendly celebrations and the stark, sobering story we read in the Megillah—attempted genocide, palace politics, and violent retribution.
Right now, that tension feels sharper than ever—urgent, ever-present. Purim feels like the ultimate holiday for our times.
In the Megillah, the Jews experience profound vulnerability. They face twin dangers—assimilation and antisemitism—and an irrational, genocidal enemy. They struggle to decipher a capricious king: is he a reckless drunk or a calculating strategist? To survive, the Jews of Persia must become political operatives and military warriors.
As Prof. Yehuda Mirsky puts it: “Dizzy really is the word. Those of us used to polities of well-organized groups striving to shape policy and the public sphere, in contention or concert, but within well-understood written and unwritten rules, cannot but be addled by the book’s vision of a vast and powerful state [where the fate of the Jews depends on] what the king happens to think of you that morning, or what he wrote on the spur of the moment in the epistle he sent out in the night.”
The Megillah makes painfully clear how much in life is beyond our control. In the wake of October 7th, that truth feels especially raw.
Yet even in a world where God seems absent, Purim reminds us we are not powerless after all.
As a kid, I learned Purim through the lens of midrash. This rabbinic tradition portrays Mordechai and Esther as deeply pious Jews—Mordechai a Sage, Esther refusing to eat non-kosher food in the palace. In this telling, they were already committed Jews.
But then I heard Rabbi Yitz Greenberg offer a different perspective: Mordechai and Esther were likely assimilated Jews.
Their names might have derived from Babylonian and Persian deities: Mordokh and Ishtar. Mordechai appears as a political insider, eager to be near the palace gates. His refusal to bow to Haman could have been driven more by rivalry than religious conviction. Esther conceals her Jewishness—perhaps out of fear, perhaps because she barely identifies with her people.
If so, Purim isn’t about pious Jews fulfilling their destiny—it’s about two people undergoing a radical awakening to who they really are.
Mordechai's realization comes when Haman plots to annihilate his people. At that moment, he realizes he is a Jew. My friend Dr. Shraga Bar-On compared this to Herzl's transformation—from an assimilated Viennese journalist to a man who, shaken by rising antisemitism, dedicates his life to the Jewish people.
And Esther? At first, she concealed her identity to protect herself, without much thought for anyone else. But then Mordechai challenges her:
“If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether it was just for a time like this that you became queen?” (Esther 4:13-14)
In other words: Your fate is intertwined with theirs. You cannot stand apart.
This reading of the Megillah has never felt more resonant.
Over the past year, many of us have faced our own Mordechai-and-Esther moment—seeing our connection to the Jewish people with new clarity, often through the painful lens of antisemitism.
How many have decided that, rather than walk away, this moment is an invitation to step forward and transform?
This, to me, is the essence of Purim: even when God is hidden, even when the path is unclear, we have the power to remove our masks—to step fully into who we can become.
Jewish philosopher Yehuda Hazony describes this transformation as a defining element of Jewish history:
“The most remarkable aspect of the book is not God’s absence itself, but the fact that this absence does not induce defeat and despair. Mordechai and Esther prove that even in the grim new universe of the dispersion, the most fearsome evils may yet be challenged and beaten—so long as man himself is willing to take the initiative to beat them.”
Purim, in short, reminds us that we are not spectators in history.
What will we do in our own Mordechai-and-Esther moment? Will we remove our masks? Will we step forward when called?
Purim may be dizzying. But when the disguises come off, what remains is absolute clarity: We each have the power to act.
Happy Purim: Hag Purim sameach! May we find the courage to see clearly—and to step forward.
Purim Theology: I wanted to share the latest podcast episode of Wondering Jews! To prepare for Purim, I had a deep and meaningful conversation with my dear friend, Dr. Tanya White—a brilliant Torah teacher and scholar of post-Holocaust theology. I loved this discussion; it gave me the theological strength for Purim I didn’t even realize I was looking for.
I am leading a Zoom group on Greenberg's new book right now so I hear echoes of his theology throughout your post and I'm finding comfort in this book which is a call to human agency and call to loving faith in G-d and our people. And isnt it possible this human agency in what he calls the 3rd stage of the covenant is an invitation from a hidden G-d for us to unmask?
The counterpoint of kids in costumes and palace intrigued, sex, and drinking always gets me. I appreciate the sense that Purim also asks us to let go of our masks and be ourselves. When we wear masksv and costumes we often expose our hidden selves.