Purim is a holiday of masks. A mask doesn’t fully change you, but it obscures identity, distorting who you are. The boy who dresses as Mordechai can act old and wise, but everyone recognizes him as a boy playing a role; the girl who dresses as Esther can play at being bold, heroic, and a queen, but everyone knows she is still a little girl.
There are many reasons why Purim is associated with masks, but surely a deep meaning is that it is a diaspora holiday. Purim takes place in ancient Shoushan, Persia. The plot revolves around Haman, who hates the Jews. The reason given is that Mordechai, a Jew, will not bow down to him, but the story implies that Haman’s rage is what we have come to know as classic anti-Semitism — a hatred in search of a rationale.
In the diaspora, Jews were forced to wear masks all of the time. In Muslim lands, we were dhimmi, second class citizens subject to a vast range of indignities and periodic persecutions. Since we were powerless to change it, we wore the mask of acceptance and accommodation. In Christian Europe, Jews were regularly exiled, oppressed, targeted for conversion, and sometimes killed. But in country after country, we donned the mask of the willing subject, because rebellion only made it worse. The few who did not wear a mask, the Mordechais who did not bow down, paid a terrible price.
Even in the United States, for a long time, Jews were afraid. During World War II, many Jewish leaders were reluctant to challenge the government’s indifference to the massacres in Europe for fear of stoking anti-Semitism here at home.
With the founding of the State of Israel, Jews finally took their masks off. This is who we are, we declared to the world, a free people who can practice our own tradition. Part of the rise of anti-Semitism today is the resentment of those who are angry at unmasked Jews. But we have worn masks long enough. This Purim, we will put on temporary, celebratory masks, but as the holiday ends, we will take them off — because the Jewish people need never wear masks again.
