What is Purim and how do we celebrate it?

The festival of Purim is the closest Judaism gets to carnival, with alcohol, fancy dress and a noisy synagogue service that sometimes sounds like a football match. It’s based on the biblical story of Esther, set in the Persian empire of the fifth century BCE under the rule of King Ahaseurus (identified by some as Xerxes). When Haman – a descendant of the Israelites’ arch-enemy, the Amalekites – becomes the king’s right-hand man, he buys the right to wipe out the Jews in the kingdom. He casts lots –

purim – to determine the date of their extermination. The Jew Mordecai turns to his niece, Esther, the wife of Ahaseurus, to save her people. Although anyone entering the royal chamber unbidden risks the King’s displeasure and death, Esther takes her life into her hands. The tables are turned. Haman is hanged on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai and the Jews are given licence to destroy their enemies. The Jews rejoice and Mordecai becomes the king’s trusted lieutenant.

The central ritual of Purim is the reading of the Megillah, the “scroll” of Esther, both in the evening which marks the start of the festival and the following morning. Each of the 54 times the name of Haman is mentioned in the public reading, a wave of noise erupts in the synagogue to drown it out. It used to be the custom to bring a a football rattle, but now all sorts of instruments are loudly sounded.

Since no other book in the Bible mentions the word “feast” as many times as Esther, eating and drinking is integral to the festival. A seudah, festive meal, is held in the afternoon, which should begin during daylight as the Megillah refers to a “day” of rejoicing. According to one tradition, you should drink to the point where you become confused between Haman and Mordecai – although rabbis in recent times have been at pains to curb youthful excess and notices in Hebrew have been posted warning people not to go overboard.

The festival’s distinctive food is the hamantaschen, a triangular pastry which some say resembles Haman’s hat while others say his ears. It has different fillings; the traditional poppyseed evokes the silver he paid into the King’s treasury to finance his evil plan.

The custom of dressing up for Purim – Jewish schools often ask their pupils to turn up that day in fancy dress – probably derives from carnivals in medieval Europe. But some try to lend it a deeper significance. Unusually, the name of God does not appear in the book of Esther but commentators relate the Queen’s name to the Hebrew word for “hidden”. Divine Providence is seen to work through the twists and turns of the Megillah story even if there is no explicit miracle. Nothing there is as it seems at first, including Haman.