Group Identity and Politics
Presidential primary season is still in full swing. Washington State held its caucus a few days ago. The so-called Super Tuesday, simultaneous multi-state primary is March 6th. We have watched numerous debates, interviews, media analysis and presentations. Our American democracy is going through a healthy period of self-examination and self-definition. We are trying hard as a nation to figure out who we are and what we stand for. What are our core values? What are our most closely held beliefs? What are the specific actions and opinions and philosophy that define more than any others who we are as individuals and as a nation? We all recognize how complex this process is and how uncertain the outcome. Any pundit or politician who claims absolute certainty is almost certainly going to be proven wrong for the final answer is yet to be written and the reality will be somewhere other than all the choices that we hear and see at this moment in time. Nonetheless, there is something extremely timely in this process for all of us as Jews.
Just the day after the Super Tuesday primary, we celebrate Purim. We mask our true identities; some say our true intentions, in costumes in keeping with the Purim story in Megillat Esther. We focus not on the individual but on the collective, the community of Israel. We give money to help take care of those in need. The Purim story is both universal and particularistic. It is universal because the drama of overcoming an enemy bent on destroying us using cunning and calculation could be any people. The organization of the Jews in every land of the Persian Empire to rise up simultaneously to defend themselves is something that any other ethnic group could have done. The triumph of good over evil might be another nation as well.
Yet it is our story that we retell each and every year and that we are supposed to learn from and act upon. We put real effort into both celebration and frivolity on one hand and the serious lessons of acting with initiative to protect ourselves on the other. Purim is as much about identity politics as is the national debate we are part of in the United States. I would argue that the lessons of Purim are just as important as the lessons of Republican and national politics.
How will we face the communal and world issues that face the Jewish people, be they Iran, Israel and the search for both security and compromise, relatively low generational affiliation with Jewish communal institutions to name a few. Spokane is a part of this too. We may wish to focus on our day to day business, on the Kosher Dinner and the education of our children, but that is not enough. If we don’t identify with and connect ourselves to the greater Jewish world beyond, we will soon lose our purpose and our direction. I hope that this is one of the areas that our scholar in residence, Rabbi Chuck Simon will address at our Retreat in late April. However, we are obligated to follow the national discussion as it takes place on line and to work to educate ourselves and our teens so that we are able to be intelligent, thoughtful members of the greater Jewish people. Imagine if when the call to arms came from Shushan, Spokane responded, “This has little to do with us. We are going to sit this out and not make a fuss.” It was in our collective solidarity and identification that we succeeded. Today is exactly the same.
Our Purim celebration is Wednesday evening starting at 5:30PM with our costume parade, the dramatic, participatory reading of the Megillah and refreshments at the end. Happy Purim!
Lehitraot,
Rabbi Michael Goldstein
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