NO, PETER BEINART—PURIM IS NOT ABOUT JEWISH VIOLENCE

Purim may be over, but one bad take on the story so thoroughly demanded my attention that, rather than ruin our fun, I saved it for today.

While the entire Hebrew Bible is a magnificent compendium of ancient life and beliefs, only two of its books really speak to me today. One of these is the Book of Esther, the centerpiece of Purim and the Bible’s most secular tale. It is undoubtedly a work of fiction, one that features court intrigue, identity reversal, and, above all, the very non-fictional struggle for Jewish survival.

Its dramatic—and sometimes funny and farcical—account of Jews facing near destruction at the hands of Haman has inspired our people for millennia. We jeer the villainous Haman and cheer for brave Queen Esther as the plot to slaughter the Jews is revealed and foiled. At least, that’s what we emphasize. There is, however, a little bit more to the story. It occurs in an almost anti-climactic coda where—because Persian law prevents the king from actually rescinding his own order to kill all the Jews (kind of a ridiculous idea)—he permits them instead to violently defend themselves. The result is a total reversal of fortune: rather than being victims, the Jews “mustered and fought for their lives,” and 75,000 of their would-be killers were defeated.

Some who read the Book of Esther as a pure historical account liken this to a genocide of the Persians. But it’s not a historical account, and anyone who understands that also understands that while the book reflects genuine Jewish anxieties—then and now—the ending is a revenge fantasy. It was written by a powerless people, imagining a world where Jews are no longer at the mercy of their enemies.

Purim is about courage, about living as a minority in a hostile world, and about the power of identity, resilience, and unexpected reversals of fortune. What Purim is not is a parable for Jewish aggression.

That, however, is exactly what Peter Beinart, a writer who has spent the past decade repurposing Jewish history as a cudgel against Israel, attempted to argue on the eve of the holiday in The Guardian. In his dreadful piece, Beinart claims that Purim is not only about the dangers posed to Jews by others but also about “the danger we pose to them.” He suggests that, rather than celebrate it for the courage it inspires to stand up for ourselves, the holiday should really serve as a reflection on Jewish wrongdoing—both in ancient Persia and, conveniently for his argument, in modern Israel.

To be precise, Beinart doesn’t call Purim a parable for Jewish aggression, but argues its ending should unsettle us because it reflects “the danger we pose to others.” This is a distinction without a difference. Recasting a diaspora revenge fantasy as an indictment of Jewish power, distorts a story of survival into yet another attack on Israel.

Beinart’s framing of Purim is so distorted that it is hard to take seriously. The story of Esther is a classic diaspora tale—a fantasy of justice in a world where Jews were powerless and at the mercy of foreign despots. The Jews in the Book of Esther do not rule Persia. They are not conquerors. They do not possess an army. They are a minority population at the mercy of a ruler who has been manipulated into signing off on their destruction. When they are finally allowed to defend themselves, it is not an act of conquest but of survival. To twist this into a parable about Jewish brutality is not just misguided. It is a complete fabrication; a forced analogy in search of a headline.

A powerless people imagining self-defense in exile has nothing to do with a sovereign nation managing real-world security. Purim is a fantasy of survival, not a blueprint for modern warfare. Pretending otherwise is a deliberate distortion. One is a work of biblical literature, deeply tied to the anxieties of exiled Jews; the other is a present-day struggle in which Israel, like every other nation, is responsible for its people’s security. Beinart’s attempt to link them is not just historically incoherent—it is politically cynical.*

One of the hallmarks of the Humanistic Jewish approach to our texts is that we do not attempt to “kosherize” them (as Rabbi Wine said) to make them fit our modern values. Doing so does little to deepen our understanding of the worlds in which our texts were created. Typically, “kosherizing” a text is done to find biblical (divine) support for generally positive, even humanistic values. But sometimes it is put into service of nastier ideological agendas. In all cases, “kosherizing” our texts does Jewish history a disservice. In some cases, it is used to hurt us.

Beinart’s effort to reshape Purim into a lesson not about Jewish survival but about Jewish wrongdoing is as dangerous as it is dishonest. Jews did not invent the persecution they suffered in Persia, nor did they in Europe, nor in any of the countless places throughout history where they were targeted for destruction. The idea that Jewish survival itself should be a source of guilt—that Purim is “about the danger we pose” to others—is not an act of moral enlightenment—it is a libelous abdication of historical truth.

Purim is not about Jewish violence. It is not about Jewish moral failure. It is about Jewish resilience in a world that has not always been kind to us. And that lesson, no matter how inconvenient it may be for some, remains as relevant today as it has ever been.

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* I am fully aware that reading the text with violent intent has lead to horrors, as seen when the Book of Esther’s revenge fantasy became a pretext for a lunatic like Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians at prayer during this season in 1995. But let there be no false equivalence: while a minuscule fringe lauded his atrocity, the overwhelming majority of the Jewish world—left, right, and center—unequivocally, repeatedly, and loudly condemned him.