A MAN IS OBLIGATED TO IMBIBE ON PURIM UNTIL HE CAN NO LONGER DISTINGUISH BETWEEN "CURSED IS HAMAN" AND "BLESSED IS MORDECHAI." purim is a veritable cornucopia of paradoxes which ignite the imagination of both scholar and layman. But perhaps the greatest challenge of all is posed by this requirement to indulge in drink to the point of losing the faculty of discernment. How, ask the commentaries throughout the generations, can we be commanded to invite that very intoxication which is so roundly reviled in both Scripture and Talmud? And why such a puzzling standard of non-discernment? CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE......
Woman walking past a display of traditional Moroccan tables. Fez El Bali, Fez, Morocco, 2010.
The answers, of course, lie in an analysis of the Purim story as recorded in Megillas Esther. The events chronicled in this divinely inspired document cover a decade of history, from the grand banquet in which Queen Vashti meets her downfall until the miraculous turnabout of a Jewish nation threatened with genocide overcoming its enemies thanks to the intervention of Queen Esther.From the perspective of historians and political analysts it is virtually impossible to see any link between the events separated by so many years and so many political developments. What connection can possibly be surmised between the drunken domestic quarrel between Achashverosh and Vashti in the third year of his reign and the same king's submitting to Esther's entreaties in his twelfth year? CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE.....
