BRUSH PRAIRIE — The Book of Esther is a classic tale of good triumphing over evil and reads much like an amazing, dramatic Disney play, said Tzivie Greenberg, co-director of the Chabad Jewish Center in Brush Prairie.
There’s a king with an evil adviser and a beautiful queen who helps thwart his evil plan. And, just when things seem particularly dire, everything gets flipped around.
But, that’s an oversimplification of the story behind the joyous Jewish holiday of Purim, which commemorates Jews in ancient Persia being saved from annihilation at the hands of Haman, who wanted to kill all the Jews in the empire. Purim is a Persian word meaning lots — as in the lots Haman cast in deciding what day to kill the Jews.
The holiday falls on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Adar, typically in late winter or early spring. This year it started Wednesday evening.
On Thursday, Rabbi Shmulik Greenberg, co-director of the Jewish center, read in Hebrew from the Book of Esther, or Megillah. As the story goes, around 400 B.C., a Jewish girl named Esther became queen. She was the niece of Mordecai, the leader of the era’s Jews who learned of a plot to kill the king. He told Esther, who then informed the king. The king appointed Haman as lead adviser. (People in the synagogue used noisemakers to blot out any mention of Haman’s name.)
Mordecai refused to bow to Haman, and Haman, enraged by this, vowed to kill him and all of Persia’s Jews, and he got the king’s OK to do it.
Esther caught wind of this plot, and even though approaching the king without a summons could lead to a death sentence, she managed to get an audience. She then invited him to a feast, and Haman joined them.
After the meal, Haman again encountered Mordecai, who again would not bow, so he sentenced Mordecai to be hanged.
That night, the king couldn’t sleep, so he had the court’s daily record read to him as a sleep aid. There, he learned of the assassination plot Mordecai helped foil.
The king, to Haman’s dismay, had the adviser render great honors unto Mordecai. To add injury to insult, Esther then revealed she’s Jewish and that Haman planned to purge her people, which enraged the king and earned Haman a trip to the gallows.
Mordecai was named the king’s new adviser, and the king issued an edict empowering the Jews to resist any who would try to harm them.
The story is unusual in that there are no open miracles or supernatural occurrences or even direct mentions of God. Still, Shmulik Greenberg said, “You see the hands of God in it.”
“This is a good lesson in our daily life,” he said. “We see how many things happen to us that cannot just happen. … God is going with us.”
In the story, Esther was worried about becoming queen because the king is moody, but Mordecai tells Esther that there is a reason she was put in the palace, Tzivie Greenberg said.
Every year, the synagogue celebrates the holiday with a themed masquerade party. It draws upon the idea that things are not always what they seem and that God is hidden behind the scenes. The Greenbergs’ 12-year-old son, Levi, came up with this year’s Wild West theme. With its noisemakers and costumes, Purim is a kid-friendly holiday.
Elana Kier’s 3-year-old son Eli goes to Gan Garrett Jewish Preschool and has been singing Purim songs all week. She said to celebrate the holiday she made Hamantasch, a sweet triangle-shaped pastry, for the first time without her mother’s help.
When asked if he wanted to dress up as a cowboy, Eli deferred to his firefighter costume from Halloween.
“It’s fun to watch all the kids dress up,” Kier said.
Besides cowboys and cowgirls there were also a couple of lady bugs, an Elsa and even a horse. Revelers snapped pictures in front of a backdrop of a Western town and played Twister in the lobby.
