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Thursday, March 17, 2011

The Fast of Esther: Purim is COMING!

By: Dmitriy Krasny

The Fast of Esther is not the most difficult fast in the Jewish calendar, nor the most auspicious. It's hard for me to say what exactly made me start observing it a couple of years ago, but it's an observance I plan to keep once again this Thursday. In the end, there is a solemn purpose of one kind or another to any fast. While we're not really mourning anything on Ta'anit Esther (as we do on, say, the 9th of Av), there is still much fodder for reflection. After all, the struggle described in the Purim story was against the very real threat of the plot to physically annihilate the entire Jewish people.

It was instituted many centuries after the advent of the holiday of Purim, and usually takes place on the day before the holiday itself (though this year, and any year when Purim falls out on Sunday, the Fast moves to the preceding Thursday, as fasting is not allowed on Shabbat). The fast we observe is commemorative - the original fast took place not in the month of Adar (which is when Purim is celebrated), but on the 14th, 15th and 16th of Nisan - that is, the eve and first two days of Passover! This came about at a critical juncture in the Purim story. Queen Esther passed a message to her uncle, Mordechai - the Jewish people's spiritual leader at the time - that she would be approaching the king and setting in motion a plan to save the Jews from destruction. Approaching the king, however, was not a trivial endeavor - the king could choose to have Esther executed if he simply didn't feel like being bothered when she came in. In the hope of garnering the Almighty's favor, Esther asked Mordechai to declare a three-day fast that would preempt the Jews' defining holiday. It's suggested that Esther's logic was, "better to fast on one Passover than to never celebrate it again".

Coming back to the present day, do we not face a similar threat now? It's true that our history has no shortage of existential threats, but for the better part of a century, we've come up against popular ideologies whose core aim was (or still is) to destroy the Jews - first the Nazis, and following them closely come the hard-line Islamists and others who do not believe Israel has a right to exist. Most of us are informed enough to know about these issues, at least on some level. We've learned about the Holocaust, and we read the news coming out of Israel with great care and empathy. But how close are we - emotionally or cerebrally - to the true struggle and suffering here? Learning of the massacre in the Itamar settlement last Saturday was painful, but if at some point that weekend you were to ask me how I was doing, my response would have been no different than it might have been a few days prior. Am I suggesting that we simulate or deliberately inflict suffering on ourselves just because others are suffering? By no means. But as much as Purim is about survival and deliverance, the Fast of Esther is about the tragedy that could have been, and as such, it allows us (or at least allows me) a chance to reflect on some of the more adverse realities of our time. The Fogel family was probably preparing to celebrate Purim like all their neighbors. Meanwhile, halfway around the globe from both Israel and the US, thousands of lives have been lost, and two million others upended... Existence is unfortunately quite fragile sometimes.

Today, I may end up thinking about nothing but 7:45pm, which is when the fast ends. But I hope I'll have the strength of character to look beyond my own (thankfully temporary) discomfort, and to mind the context in which it is taking place.

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2 comments:

  1. After reading this I'm very upset that I didnt know that the fast was actually today. This would have inspired me to keep the fast.

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