Parashat Zachor and Purim

This Shabbat, at the end of the Torah reading, we read Parashat Zachor, one of four special readings for this time of year.

Zachor. Remember. Remember what the Amalekites did to you, how they attacked you from behind, when you were weak and tired. Zachor. Remember, too, the Nazis of our generation and the six million Jews they slaughtered. Never forget.

Remembering is what we Jews do best. We put on tefillin in order to remember the mitzvot. We celebrate Shabbat in order to remember creation and the exodus. We celebrate Sukkot in order to remember our experience in the desert.

Sometimes these memories are too much, too heavy for us. It is hard to live in the present and hope for a good future when one spends too much time contemplating the Holocaust. As a people we are weighed down by our memories of suffering.

And that is where Purim comes in.

We read Parashat Zachor every year on the Shabbat before Purim because Haman, the villain of Purim, is a descendant of Amalek, an example of precisely the type of evil we are commanded to remember.

On the one hand, Purim, like other holidays, is a holiday of remembering; the mitzvah is to hear every single syllable of the megillah read twice in 24 hours. On the other hand, on Purim we say that one should drink until one can no longer tell the difference, ad delo yada, between the good and the bad characters of the story, between the cursed Haman and the blessed Mordecai. One should drink oneself into a state of happy oblivion, into a state of not knowing and not remembering. This is not Zachor, but a kind of anti-Zachor.

Maybe this is part of the special simchah, happiness, of Purim. On Purim, we try to be joyful like only children are joyful; children don’t worry about the past and the future; they are present and alive to the fun of the moment. Yes, Purim is a remembrance. But with its light, carnival-like frolicking, it is also a mockery of remembrance, also an escape from the clutches of history, an escape from the serious adult task of making order out of an often cruel world.

Purim sanctifies this joy, sanctifies for one precious day this escape from memory and order, making it, too, part of the spiritual experience of the year. Psalm 35 says : Kol atzmotay tomarna Hashem mi kamokha. With all of my limbs I declare: “Lord, who is like you?” Not just with all of my limbs, but also with all of my emotions, with sadness and with joy, with seriousness and with frolicking, with memory and with an escape from memory. All are part of the religious experience.

In light of the lightness of Purim, I have included some Purim riddles as well. Enjoy!