It is scarcely accurate to assert, as is sometimes done, that the most
characteristic of the Purim pranks of the past were children of the Ghetto,
and came to a natural end when the Ghetto walls fell. In point of fact,
most of these joys originated before the era of the Ghetto, and others were
introduced for the first time when Ghetto life was about to fade away into
history.
Probably the oldest of Purim pranks was the bonfire and the burning of an
effigy. Now, so far from being a Ghetto custom, it did not even emanate
from Europe, the continent of Ghettos; it belongs to Babylonia and Persia.
This is what was done, according to an old Geonic account recovered by
Professor L. Ginzberg:
"It is customary in Babylonia and Elam for boys to make an effigy
resembling Haman; this they suspend on their roofs, four or five days
before Purim. On Purim day they erect a bonfire, and cast the effigy into
its midst, while the boys stand round about it, jesting and singing. And
they have a ring suspended in the midst of the fire, which (ring) they
hold and wave from one side of the fire to the other."
Bonfires, it may be thought, need no recondite explanation; light goes with
a light heart, and boys always love a blaze. Dr. J.G. Frazer, in his
"Golden Bough," has endeavored, nevertheless, to bring the Purim bonfire
into relation with primitive spring-tide and midsummer conflagrations,
which survived into modern carnivals, but did not originate with them. Such
bonfires belonged to what has been called sympathetic or homeopathic magic;
by raising an artificial heat, you ensured a plentiful dose of the natural
heat of the sun. So, too, the burning of an effigy was not, in the first
instance, a malicious or unfriendly act. A tree-spirit, or a figure
representing the spirit of vegetation, was consumed in fire, but the spirit
was regarded as beneficent, not hostile, and by burning a friendly deity
the succor of the sun was gained. Dr. Frazer cites some evidence for the
early prevalence of the Purim bonfire; he argues strongly and persuasively
in favor of the identification of Purim with the Babylonian feast of the
Sacaea, a wild, extravagant bacchanalian revel, which, in the old Asiatic
world, much resembled the Saturnalia of a later Italy. The theory is
plausible, though it is not quite proven by Dr. Frazer, but it seems to me
that whatever be the case with Purim generally, there is one hitherto
overlooked feature of the Purim bonfire that does clearly connect it with
the other primitive conflagrations of which mention was made above.
This overlooked feature is the "ring." No explanation is given by the Gaon
as to its purpose in the tenth century, and it can hardly have been used to
hold the effigy. Now, in many of the primitive bonfires, the fire was
produced by aid of a revolving wheel. This wheel typifies the sun. Waving
the "ring" in the Purim bonfires has obviously the same significance, and
this apparently inexplicable feature does, I think, serve to link the
ancient Purim prank with a long series of old-world customs, which, it need
hardly be said, have nothing whatever to do with the Ghetto.
Then, again, the most famous of Purim parodies preceded the Ghetto period.
The official Ghetto begins with the opening of the sixteenth century,
whereas the best parodies belong to a much earlier date, the fourteenth
century. Such parodies, in which sacred things are the subject of harmless
jest, are purely medieval in spirit, as well as in date. Exaggerated
praises of wine were a foil to the sobriety of the Jew, the fun consisting
in this conscious exaggeration. The medieval Jew, be it remembered, drew no
severe line between sacred and profane. All life was to him equally holy,
equally secular. So it is not strange that we find included in sacred
Hebrew hymnologies wine-songs for Purim and Chanukah and other Synagogue
feasts, and these songs are at least as old as the early part of the
twelfth century. For Purim, many Synagogue liturgies contain serious
additions for each of the eighteen benedictions of the Amidah prayer, and
equally serious paraphrases of Esther, some of them in Aramaic, abound
among the Genizah fragments in Cambridge. Besides these, however, are many
harmlessly humorous jingles and rhymes which were sung in the synagogue,
admittedly for the amusement of the children, and for the child-hearts of
adult growth. For them, too, the Midrash had played round Haman, reviling
him, poking fun at him, covering him with ridicule rather than execration.
It is true that the earliest ritual reference to the wearing of masks on
Purim dates from the year 1508, just within the Ghetto period. But this
omission of earlier reference is surely an accident, In the Babylonian
Sacaea, cited above, a feature of the revel was that men and women
disguised themselves, a slave dressed up as king, while servants personated
masters, and vice versa. All these elements of carnival exhilaration are
much earlier than the Middle Ages. Ghetto days, however, originated,
perhaps, the stamping of feet, clapping of hands, clashing of mallets, and
smashing of earthenware pots, to punctuate certain passages of the Esther
story and of the subsequent benediction.
My strongest point concerns what, beyond all other delights, has been
regarded as the characteristic amusement of the festival, viz. the Purim
play. We not only possess absolutely no evidence that Purim plays were
performed in the Ghettos till the beginning of the eighteenth century, when
the end of the Ghettos was almost within sight, but the extant references
imply that they were then a novelty. Plays on the subject of Esther were
very common in medieval Europe during earlier centuries, but these plays
were written by Christians, not by Jews, and were performed by monks, not
by Rabbis. Strange as it may seem, it is none the less the fact that the
Purim play belongs to the most recent of the Purim amusements, and that its
life has been short and, on the whole, inglorious.
Thus, without pressing the contention too closely, Purim festivities do not
deserve to be tarred with the Ghetto brush. Is it, then, denied that Purim
was more mirthfully observed in Ghetto days than it is at the present day?
By no means. It is unquestionable that Purim used to be a merrier
anniversary than it is now. The explanation is simple. In part, the change
has arisen through a laudable disinclination from pranks that may be
misconstrued as tokens of vindictiveness against an ancient foe or his
modern reincarnations. As a second cause may be assigned the growing and
regrettable propensity of Jews to draw a rigid line of separation between
life and religion, and wherever this occurs, religious feasts tend towards
a solemnity that cannot, and dare not, relax into amusement. This tendency
is eating at the very heart of Jewish life, and ought to be resisted by all
who truly understand the genius of Judaism.
But the psychology of the change goes even deeper. The Jew is emotional,
but he detests making a display of his feelings to mere onlookers. The
Wailing Wall scenes at Jerusalem are not a real exception--the facts are
"Cooked," to meet the demands of clamant tourists. The Jew's sensitiveness
is the correlative of his emotionalism. While all present are joining in
the game, each Jew will play with full abandonment to the humor of the
moment. But as soon as some play the part of spectators, the Jew feels his
limbs growing too stiff for dancing, his voice too hushed for song. All
must participate, or all must leave off. Thus, a crowd of Italians or
Southern French may play at carnival to-day to amuse sight-seers in the
Riviera, but Jews have never consented, have never been able, to sport that
others might stand by and laugh at, and not with, the sportsmen. In short,
Purim has lost its character, because Jews have lost their character, their
disposition for innocent, unanimous joyousness. We are no longer so closely
united in interests or in local abodes that we could, on the one hand,
enjoy ourselves as one man, and, on the other, play merry pranks, without
incurring the criticism of indifferent, cold-eyed observers. Criticism has
attacked the authenticity of the Esther story, and proposed Marduk for
Mordecai, and Istar for Esther. But criticism of another kind has worked
far more havoc, for its "superior" airs have killed the Purim joy. Perhaps
it is not quite dead after all.