Today is Purim, Jewish Mardi Gras, a day to commemorate the defeat of Haman’s plot to massacre the Jews as recorded in the book of Esther. Purim commemorates the tale of the Jews’ narrow escape from extermination in Persia’s Achaemenid Empire.
The story told in the book of Esther, takes place in the fifth century B.C., a millennium before the rise of Islam. King Xerxes, whose kingdom stretches from India to Ethiopia, selects Esther as his new queen. She conceals her Jewishness, but her cousin and foster father Mordechai, doesn’t and refuses to prostate before the king’s vizier Haman, who is so enraged that he persuades the king to exterminate the Jews.
After some political maneuvering, Esther audaciously reveals her identity and everything turns upside down. Xerxes orders Haman hanged on the gallows meant for Mordechai, and the Jews defeat their enemies in a two-day war across the Persian provinces.
Jews wear costumes and get drunk on Purim. Why? Just as the Jews at the time pretended to be serving other gods, God pretended that he was going to destroy the Jewish nation and in the end did not. This is the reason Jews pretend to be someone else on Purim, since both the Jews and God’s actions were masked by other intentions.
They get drunk in order to not know the difference between good and evil. Not to know the difference between blessed be Mordechai and cursed be Haman, or is it the other way round? Bottom line, it caused the Jews to unite as one people while still debating whether it was Mordechai’s fault for refusing to prostrate before the king’s vizier Haman or Haman’s decision to exterminate all the Jews in Persia.
Purim is an appropriate metaphor for what is happening in Washington D.C. today. Career politicians masquerading as representatives of the people when in fact they are representing their financial supporters and own political survival.
To all our representatives in Congress and their opponents in the looming 2018 midterm elections, please stop masquerading and getting drunk with your power and start representing the people who elect you.
President Trump, please stop masquerading as a Republican and start listening and doing what We the People want!