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I stumbled off to the side of the dance floor, chest heaving, barely able to catch my breath. My head was spinning, not just from the wine earlier that day, but from a mixture of confusion and rage. Towards the front of the room, music was booming from the speakers. A frenetic energy filled the space, rising from the steady tempo of the footsteps pounding the ground on alternating beats: AD de-ad de-LO ya-DA; AD de-ad de-LO ya-DA; AD de-LOH-oh-oh ya-DA. [1] I readjusted my sweaty Purim costume and stepped outside into the courtyard. 

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I was surprised to see Nathan S., the host of the seudah, sitting outside as well, sipping slowly from a wine glass of his own. He seemed deep in thought, but after seeing me enter the courtyard he beckoned me over. We sat next to each other in silence for a few minutes. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

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“Not really,” I said. “Something about the Purim shpiel earlier really threw me off. I mean, it was funny, but seeing the reenactment of those pieces – some of the things I care about most in my religious life! – performed in that disrespectful, mocking way! It felt like they were treating our holy reality like it was all made up, that it’s all fake. That there’s no there there.”

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Nathan received my outburst earnestly, though a curious look soon crossed his face. “And this bothers you?”

“Of course! If our entire reality is a sham, why the hell are we doing any of this?” I shouted. 

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We were silent again for a while. All of a sudden, Nathan straightened up and turned to me. “Can I tell you a story?” he asked. “It’s about why Purim is the most important holiday of the year.”

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“Go on, then,” I said.

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He nodded in appreciation. “This is a story I heard years ago from one of my teachers, who never said it was about Purim, but I’ve been thinking about it all day and I’ve come to believe that reading it through the lens of Purim is the key to understanding the story.”

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“I’m ready for it,” I said.

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Nathan exhaled deeply to gather himself and began.

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Rabbi Elimelech and his brother, Rabbi Zusha of Annopol, may his memory protect us, once argued over a matter concerning their service of God. Why is it that when the holy Sabbath arrives, they feel the sanctity of the day, and deliver Torah teachings at their table before all the hasidim? They were concerned that perhaps their service and feelings were not genuine; that they were merely a product of their imaginations. They decided to test this by holding a Sabbath meal on a weekday, together with all the hasidim. If they felt the same feelings as they did on the Sabbath, then their practice and their feelings were false, God forbid. However, if they did not feel the same as on Sabbath, then they would clearly know that their path of worship was true. So they did, preparing a meal as if it were for the holy Sabbath, and wearing their Sabbath clothes, including the shtreimel. They sat at the table with a group of hasidim, and experienced an intense feeling. They also spoke words of Torah. Then Rabbi Elimelech began to cry. “What should we do, Zusha?” he asked his holy brother. Rabbi Zusha replied, “Elimelech, let us go to Mezritch [where their teacher, Rabbi Dov Ber, lived], and put the matter before him and hear his response.” They traveled to the Maggid of Mezritch, and related to him their bitterness. The Maggid, may his memory protect us, answered them, “If you were wearing Sabbath clothing and a shtreimel, then you really did feel the holiness of Sabbath, because the clothing attracted the light of the holiness of the Sabbath. You needn’t be concerned at all. [2]

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The story lingered in the air between us. Nathan’s brow furrowed as he realized it had not made the impact he had hoped. The satisfaction from his delivery slipped away from his face.

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“I’m afraid I’m not seeing the point,” I said. 

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“The idea is that the world we perceive as real is actually constructed by our cultural and social behaviors, if you believe the postmodernists. As for how we think about ourselves, there’s an inverted, nahafoch hu relationship: we as subjects are products of our speech and actions, not the other way around. And if you’ve read any Judith Butler, you’ll know that we create our illusions of a solid identity through the repetition of certain words and gestures, through performance. Our behaviors don’t reflect reality; they construct it. They become it.”

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He paused, waiting for the connection to the story to become clear. When he saw I wasn't connecting the dots, he continued. 

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“The brothers ask the question if there’s any transcendent essence to the time and experience of Shabbat which they access each Friday night. But when they experience the Shabbat holiness on a weekday, having behaved that day exactly as if it were Shabbat, complete with appropriate dress, food, and teachings, Rabbi Elimelech becomes upset: does this mean there’s no transcendent element at all to the experience of Shabbat? Have their feelings been false all along? What their teacher the Maggid affirms to them at the end is that the holiness of Shabbat is constituted by the performance of these particular ‘stylized and repetitive’ actions, as Reb Butler would say. This performance of Shabbat is enough, because that’s always already what it is.”

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A deep sympathy for Rabbi Elimelech’s distress swelled in me and I felt myself growing more agitated. “So then is all of our religious life just… a form of drag to you? Were those Shabbat clothes just a cover-up for the emptiness of all things?”

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Nathan smiled knowingly. “It’s true that drag is one way of engaging with this kind of postmodern idea, especially as it allows you to break down the sense of having a self-contained and fixed identity. Where mystics – and I would count the early Hasidim among them – differ from postmodernists is that they believe in a Divine Omnipresence that suffuses everything, but which is so overpowering that it must be covered up and hidden in the pieces that make up our world, what the Hasidim call ‘garments.’ But when you break down this illusion by engaging in these rituals of performativity, like Reb Zusha’s weekday Shabbos meal, or doing drag, you can move past these illusory garments and recognize the fullness of the Divine Presence that exists in all parts of the structure we live in and in all of our performances that reify them. The only difference between a weekday and Shabbat is that we channel the latent holiness of any given moment into that particular experience through its distinct set of performances.”

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I let the thrust of his words wash over me. My gaze flickered around the courtyard, determined to look anywhere but back at Nathan. 

I took in the full Purim scene unfolding front of us: feathered hats flying off brightly colored costumes as the dancers made one circle after another; a flurry of somersaults and headstands from dignified teachers and community leaders; friends giving raucous toasts to one another using the same austere melodies and exalted verses one would hear on the Days of Awe. Nathan, who had been watching me intently, gestured outward with his arms as if to say, see, isn’t this exactly what I’m talking about?

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In that instant I let myself consider his words through the lens of Purim, its themes and symbols flashing through my mind, swirling and weaving around each other like the dancers in the courtyard. The full implication of his argument slowly began to fall into place. 

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It’s all a performance.

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Every holiday, every ritual, from Shabbat to Yom Kippur to the way we pray and dress ourselves each day. But knowing that doesn’t make it any less powerful, any less real! In fact, it’s the only possible technique available to us. We are always performing, cloaking ourselves in our sacred costumes and masks, whether our material clothing or our gender expression or our religious culture – and it is the garments and performance that create the experience of authentic reality.

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So then Purim is the celebration of our ability to play these roles. With its exaggerated parodies and the way it revels in turning our regular patterns upside-down, we acknowledge how contingent the structure is, how socially constructed any structure ever is – by laughing at it, mocking it, exaggerating it. This is our annual ritual of performativity, laying the structure of our entire Jewish framework bare and looking at it right in the face.

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Yet we continue to perform it anyway, I thought, actively reaffirming it year after year. Purim, then, is the festival where we accept upon ourselves the structure for another year, like the Jews of Shushan who accepted willingly on Purim what they had already taken upon themselves at Sinai. [3] 

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We acknowledge this choice and choose to forget it at the same moment. 

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At this, I shivered, feeling the goosebumps run down my back. 

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“It does mean you have to get out of your own head for a bit,” I said finally, almost shocked at the sound of my own voice. Nathan smiled. 

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“Yes, sometimes you need to bracket your own intellect for the sake of playing within a symbolic system. But that’s what makes the game worth playing. Knowing that, and playing anyway, is what makes the play fun, and, dare I say… meaningful.”

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“A few lechayims help too, I suppose,” I added. 

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“It’s certainly possible.”

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Nathan slapped his knees and stood up, and took a step towards the hall to rejoin the dancing. He suddenly turned around, a serious look on his face.

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“So you know how ELUL is actually an acronym?”

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Oh no, I thought. Is this going to be another lecture, this time about the mystical connections between Purim and Yom Kippur? I didn’t think I could handle any more revelations for the day. 

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“Doesn’t it stand for Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li?” I said hesitantly. 

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“Usually it does. But not today,” he said, his eyes twinkling mischievously. 

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I sighed and nodded, courteously feigning innocence so he could nail the timing of the joke.

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“Today it stands for ‘Ani Lechayim…. V’Lechayim Lechayim.’”

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I laughed despite myself, a deep, Purimic laugh.

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“Lechayim.”

​

“Lechayim.”

 

Endnotes​

[1] Lit. “until one cannot distinguish.” This Hebrew phrase is lifted from the statement that “A person should drink on Purim until the point where he can't tell the difference between "Blessed is Mordechai" and "Cursed is Haman.” (Talmud - Megillah 7b). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYEfQPdGyyM 

[2] Aryeh Mordechai Rabinowitz, Keter Ha-Yehudi (Jerusalem, 1929), 55–56, sec. 8. Accessed via Tsippi Kauffman, “Hasidic Performance: Establishing a Religious Non-Identity in the Tales about Rabbi Zusha of Annopol,” Journal of Religion, 95 (1), 51-71. https://doi.org/10.1086/678534

[3] BT Shabbat 88a.