Beinart’s Vicious Distortion of Purim & Jewish History

‘One is required to become ‘spiced’” — that is, intoxicated — “on Purim.” Thus teach the sages of the Talmud. How spiced? (Only a Jew could respond to such a command with such a question.) “Until he does not know the difference between Cursed Haman and Blessed Mordechai.”

Jews feast and drink on Purim, celebrated today, to recall the story of the Book of Esther. In ancient Persia, the charming Jewish orphan for whom the book is named wins King Ahasuerus’s beauty pageant and becomes queen of a massive empire, while keeping her Jewishness secret. Her uncle Mordechai refuses to prostrate himself before Ahasuerus’s top vizier, the Amalekite Haman, enraging Haman to the point that he petitions the king to allow a genocide of the Jews. Through Esther’s machinations and a quick succession of slapstick reversals, all is turned upside-down. Haman is hanged on the gallows he built to kill Mordechai, and the Jews turn their swords on their enemies. Good triumphs over evil.

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Tal Fortgang

Tal Fortgang is a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

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‘One is required to become ‘spiced’” — that is, intoxicated — “on Purim.” Thus teach the sages of the Talmud. How spiced? (Only a Jew could respond to such a command with such a question.) “Until he does not know the difference between Cursed Haman and Blessed Mordechai.”

Jews feast and drink on Purim, celebrated today, to recall the story of the Book of Esther. In ancient Persia, the charming Jewish orphan for whom the book is named wins King Ahasuerus’s beauty pageant and becomes queen of a massive empire, while keeping her Jewishness secret. Her uncle Mordechai refuses to prostrate himself before Ahasuerus’s top vizier, the Amalekite Haman, enraging Haman to the point that he petitions the king to allow a genocide of the Jews. Through Esther’s machinations and a quick succession of slapstick reversals, all is turned upside-down. Haman is hanged on the gallows he built to kill Mordechai, and the Jews turn their swords on their enemies. Good triumphs over evil.