Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Purim has a “carnivalesque” quality both in terms of its original narrative, as well as how the holiday is celebrated. Despite its joyous display of festivities and mardi gras, the holiday masks a very serious reality—the precarious nature of Jewish survival.

One of my favorite literary critics, the 20th century Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, defined the carnivalesque as a literary mode that subverts and liberates the assumptions of the dominant style or atmosphere through humor, chaos, and paradox.

The carnivalesque vision is utopian in that it exposes the hierarchical distinctions of our social order as arbitrary, relative-a matter of social convention. Hans Christian Andersen’s famous short story, The Emperor’s New Clothes, illustrates the carnivalesque spirit that ridicules monarchs who believe that their social position makes them inherently superior to the common person is altogether ridiculous-even illusory.

The experience of the carnival-with all the social niceties, hierarchies within a given social order, perceptions of truth, the concepts of reverence or piety and etiquettes-are profaned and overturned by normally suppressed voices and energies. A fool may suddenly appear wise, kings may transform into beggars, worlds of opposites co-mingle as if reality itself has turned upside down upon its head.

Many of Bahktin’s ideas can be seen in the story of how Esther and Mordechai thwarted a genocide that was being planned against the Jewish people.

In the book of Esther, the King’s penchant for partying, immediately displays to the reader a surreal world where the beautiful Queen Vashti is suddenly treated as though she were a common stripper at a bachelor party.

Vashti’s transformation as a well-respected woman to someone who is banished from the kingdom is contrasted by an equally far-fetched scenario-Esther’s ascent to the royal throne. No sooner does Esther become queen, a deadly threat emerges that threatens the people of Esther-Haman.

Haman’s rise to power is mysterious and rapid. No sooner had the Jews started to feel comfortable in their new Persian home, then suddenly-they are about to be annihilated by a foe who hates them for merely being religiously different.

As with Vashti and Esther, Haman’s ending is equally unpredictable as it is topsy-turvy. The man who obviously aspires to become King, ends up getting hung or impaled because of his hubris. Normalcy returns to the kingdom and the Jews live to see another day-and then some.

Even God undergoes a carnivalesque transformation in Esther. Far from being the revealed Deity of the Exodus, God is invisible throughout the Esther narrative. Yet, it is when God is most hidden, His Presence can still be felt through the downfall of the Jews’ archetypal enemy-Haman. Continue Reading

Of all the different types of Jewish literary expression, “Purim Torah” is a unique and remarkable genre. It is rabbinic satire at its best that centers on the festivities, customs, and traditions of Purim. Individuals writing Purim Torah display remarkable wit in weaving Talmudic logic in fabricating conclusions that border somewhere between the ridiculous and sublime.

A couple of years ago, I received a delightful section of a fabricated Talmud–replete with all the Aramaic expressions one would expect to find in a Talmudic debate. The selection contains a discussion written in Aramaic and Medieval Hebrew involving President Obama, Al Gore having a debate about global warming. Even the commentaries of Rashi and Tosfot that explained the make-believe text looked pretty authentic. The name of the tractate is Mesechect Obama Metzia (a pun on the Talmudic tractate Bava Metzia). The article proved to be quite novel and ingenious.

Here is another example of “Purim Torah” that almost sounds like a Rod Serling story from the Twilight Zone. The story is well-known. Haman’s plot to destroy the Jews of the Persian Empire ended in disaster for Haman and his family. Queen Esther and Ahashverus have a conversation.

• And the king said to Esther the queen: The Jews have slain and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the capital, and the ten sons of Haman…Now whatever your petition, it shall be granted; whatever your request further, it shall be done. Then said Esther: If it please the king, let it be granted to the Jews that are in Shushan to do tomorrow also as this day, and have the bodies of Haman’s ten sons hanged in public display on the gallows.” (Esther 9:12-14)

One might ask: Esther’s request seems somewhat strange. The ten sons of Haman had already been killed, why did the King bother hanging them? The simple approach suggests she made this request so that everyone would know the consequences that would befall them, just in case anyone else might attempt to harm the Jews. However, rabbinic commentaries offer a different spin. Commenting on the word “tomorrow” in Esther’s request, the ancient rabbis comment, “There is a tomorrow that is now, and a tomorrow which is later” (Tanchuma Bo 13 and Rashi on Exodus 13:14).

From this interpretation, some 20th century rabbis claim that the hanging of Haman’s ten sons is not an isolated episode in history. Esther unconsciously prophesied a time when the Jewish people would reenact the hanging of Haman’s ten sons! While this sounds preposterous, there is something to this story that you may not know.

And now you are going to hear–the rest of the story …

Rabbi Moshe Katz writes about one of the most remarkable “Torah Codes” of all time. The subject of the Torah Codes (a.k.a. Bible Codes) is widely debated and any student who understands textual criticism realizes the dubious validity of the Torah Codes as an interpretive enterprise. Advocates of the Torah Codes (Hebrew: צפנים בתנ”ך‎) allege that the Torah contains set of secret messages encoded within the text Hebrew Bible and describing prophesies. This hidden code has been described as a technique by which specific letters from the text can be selected to reveal an otherwise obscured message. Torah Code expositors essentially view the Torah as a gigantic anagram. The subject has been popularized in modern times by Michael Drosnin’s book The Bible Code. However, this particular Bible Code in the book of Esther is too striking to ignore. If nothing else, the author presents an incredible synchronicity [1]

• During World War II, the Nazis in Germany tried to wipe the Jewish race from the face of the earth. Six million Jews were killed by the Germans. After the end of the war, the surviving Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg for this and other war crimes. These trials began on November 20, 1945, for 22 German Nazi leaders. On October 1, 1946, twelve of the German defendants were sentenced to death by hanging for their part in the atrocities committed against the Jews and others. One of those convicted was Martin Bormann, who was sentenced in absentia. A second was Hermann Goering, who committed suicide in his cell just hours before the executions by taking cyanide poison. The remaining ten Germans were hanged to death on October 16, 1946.

• The Massorah prescribes that the names of the ten sons of Haman be written in a perpendicular column on the right-hand side of the page, with the vav, i.e., and, on the left-hand side. This is probably derived from the tradition that the ten sons were hanged on a tall gallows, one above the other. . . . (The Five Megilloth, p. 179) However, there may be another reason why these names are listed one above the other. As you can see by looking at the list of names, four letters (the tav in the first name, the shin and tav in the seventh name, and the zayin in the tenth name) appear smaller than the other letters. Starting at the top of the passage, I’ve highlighted three of these four small letters in red. In the Hebrew language, letters can also represent numbers. Tav has a numerical value of 400, shin a numerical value of 300, and zayin a numerical value of 7. The tav, shin, and zayin, totaled from top to bottom, represent the number 707. . . [2]

• In Esther 9:7-9, we find a list of the ten sons of Haman who were killed by the Jews. Below is the Hebrew text of these verses as it appears in the Tanakh. Remember, Hebrew reads from right to left. The three letters together form taf-shin-zayin, the Jewish year 5707 (1946 C.E.), the year that the ten Nazi criminals were executed. Of the 23 Nazi war criminals on trial in Nuremberg, 11 were in fact sentenced to execution by hanging. Two hours before the sentence was due to be carried out, Goering committed suicide–so that only 10 descendents of Amalek were hung, thus fulfilling the request of Esther: “let Haman’s ten sons be hanged.” Furthermore, since the trial was conducted by a military tribunal, the sentence handed down should have been death by firing squad, or by electric chair as practiced in the U.S.A. However, the court specifically prescribed hanging, exactly as in Esther’s original request: “let Haman’s ten sons be hanged.”Though doubts may linger about the connection between the Book of Esther and the Nazi war criminals, the condemned Julius Streicher certainly had none….[as The New York Herald Tribune of October 16, 1946 reported after he ascended to the gallows] “With burning hatred in his eyes, Streicher looked down at the witnesses and shouted: “Purim Fest 1946!”… If these “coincidences” are not enough, examine the calendar for that month. The date of the execution (October 16, 1946) fell on the Jewish festival of “Hoshana Rabba” (21 Tishrei), a day when God’s verdicts are sealed. This was the very day they were hanged, as we have said, all is hinted at in the Torah! [3]

We’ll add one more detail Moshe Katz left out: The Book of Esther recorded that the ten had been hanged on a tree. The Hebrew word for tree is eytz, which is also “wood” in English. The hangman at Nuremberg was named John C. Woods, an American army officer. (After the executions Woods burned the hoods and ropes even though he had been offered $2,500 for them as souvenirs. John Wood’s revulsion for pecuniary gain also corresponds to another passage found in the book of Esther, “The Jews of Shushan mustered again on the fourteenth day of Adar and slew three hundred men in Shushan. But they did not lay hands on the spoil” (Esther 9:15).

Could Rabbi Moshe Katz’s exposition qualify as “Purim Torah” according to the criteria we mentioned above? Maybe. Nevertheless, connection between the death of Haman’s sons and the ten Nazis, combined with Streicher’s realization that he and his fellow murderers were reliving the conclusion of the ancient Purim story. However, this time it was, as Streicher said, “Purim Fest 1946.” This unexpected synchronicity ought to give us pause to think that history sometimes follows a trajectory of archetypal patterns. Actually, one would be hard-pressed to find a better example of Purim Torah than the story of the ten Nazis and its alleged connection to the ten sons of Haman.[4] Continue Reading