“A short summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat.” - comedian Alan King

Winter through spring in the Jewish calendar, for young children especially, has a tendency to become a blur of good guys and bad guys (with a short hiatus to celebrate the trees, of course). Antiocus becomes confused with Haman and Ahasuerus; Mordechai and Moses become interchangeable as children try to make sense of the stories they hear. In early childhood, we know that children learn best from concrete experiences. The stories of Hanukkah, Purim and Pesach can seem less than relevant to children whose lives revolve around blocks, play dough, whose turn it is to go down the slide, Shabbat candles, and what’s for snack. The wise teacher will introduce the stories of the holidays with provocations that attract the children’s attention, draw out questions and draw the children into the stories. As children begin playing with colorful candles and vials of olive oil, materials and containers that result in different kinds of noise makers, castle blocks added to the block corner, crunchy matza in the sensory table or different kinds of jumping frogs, the stories of the Jewish people become concrete and relevant.

In early childhood we share stories with children in so many ways. We read, we use puppets, felt boards and dress up clothes. We record children’s dictated versions of the story and we invite them to create their own illustrations. We set up our dramatic play areas to support holiday-story-related-play, and we create the props and foods to go along with each story. We are laying the foundation of each child’s and family’s Jewish identity with each experience we prepare. The goal is that these stories will be revisited every year. Each year the child (and indeed, even the family) comes to the story a different person, more mature and in a different place in his or her life, ready to understand the story in a new and hopefully deeper way. In early childhood, when the foundation is just beginning to be laid, the details are bound to get mixed up. We can expect that when we come to Purim, Judah Maccabee will still be looked to as the hero. When we come to Pesach, many children will hold Haman responsible for keeping the Jews as slaves in Egypt.

At the end of the day, it is essential to remember that the ultimate goal of the laying of a foundation is a lifelong Jewish identity. It is not as important for 4 year olds to keep straight the names of each bad guy and hero and which holiday story they correspond to, as to understand the strength of faith and to feel pride at belonging to such a strong people as the Jewish people. Alan King’s quip, quoted at the beginning of this article, strikes a chord, especially at this time of year when we are busy telling the stories of so many assaults against the Jewish people, so many fights for our survival. Many people struggle with this theme, with the Jewish people being seen as constantly having to fight for our survival and often being portrayed as victims. This can be especially true for people who work with young children. We struggle with how to not turn our classrooms into the stage for one battle after another, for this not to be the lasting, deep understanding of what the children understand it is to be Jewish.

So wherein lies the balance? How can we truthfully portray the story of our holidays to our children, and still keep it within a positive light? The stories are building blocks of each child’s Jewish identity, and it is always best, with children of any age, to never teach anything that would need to be retaught later. We can certainly edit for age appropriate versions and even create our own midrash to fill in holes left by the text of the original stories, but we should avoid actually changing the text. For example, it would be permissible to edit out Vashti or even baby Moses in the basket, if that seems too scary for some three year old classes, but it would not be okay to say that Esther went to see the king with no hesitations or that Pharaoh forced the Jews into slavery because he wanted the free labor.

When Jews study text, we learn by asking the text questions. We need to do that with our holiday stories, both with our co-teachers before we bring the stories to the children, and then again with the children. By taking a deeper, questioning look at the stories we tell, we can cull out the enduring messages that we want to become part of the foundational identities and go beyond the good guy-bad guy sagas. In this article I model how we can question the story of Purim, although we can ask similar questions of all of our “let’s eat” stories.

Consider the following passage from the Book of Esther:

When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel or bow low to him, Haman was filled with rage. But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone; having been told who Mordecai’s people were, Haman plotted to do away with all the Jews, Mordecai’s people, throughout the kingdom of Ahasuerus. (Esther 3:5-6)

So perhaps it’s true: they tried to kill us. But we must ask, what allows one person to victimize another? What do we know about Haman? Why does he think he can do this to Mordecai, indeed to all of Mordecai’s people? Where does his power, or his sense of power come from? Why couldn’t he just use his words to tell Mordecai that he was angry? We learn, in the beginning of chapter three of the Book of Esther, that the king promoted Haman to the highest official position. The king commanded that everyone should bow to Haman. When Mordecai, who is hanging around the king’s gates making sure Esther is okay, will not bow down, and tells the king’s courtiers it is because he is a Jew, the courtiers tattle to Haman. Haman is enraged – possibly embarrassed, certainly frustrated – and moves straight to revenge, really ethnic cleansing, over a minor offense. But Haman must use deceit in order to fulfill his revengeful plan. He lies to the king, saying “There is a certain people whose laws are different from those of any other people and do not obey the king’s laws, and it is not in Your Majesty’s interest to tolerate them.” (Esther 3:8) Further, Haman offers to fatten the royal treasury for the privilege to destroy this people. The king has already been shown, earlier in the story, to be a foolish person, and here he is still more foolish. He gives Haman carte blanche to do with this people as he sees fit. So what allows one person to victimize another? An over enthusiastic sense of power, a bloated ego, an inability to maintain proper perspective, greed, foolish leaders. When we can see Haman for who he really is, we can see that his desire to victimize comes from weakness.

In the story of Purim, Mordecai and Esther are truly the dynamic duo. Consider the scene. Mordecai alerts Esther to Haman’s plan to destroy the Jews and charges her to go and inform the king. She protests – no one may visit the king without an invitation, and she has not been invited in a month. So Mordecai has this message delivered to Esther:

Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king’s palace. On the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis. (Esther 4:13-14)

We must ask the text, what gives someone the strength to overcome persecution? Mordecai’s faith – that salvation will come from somewhere – is unshakable. But Esther’s faith is also up to the task:

Then Esther sent back this message to Mordecai: “Go, assemble all the Jews who live in Shushan, and fast in my behalf; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maidens will observe the same fast. Then I shall go to the king, though it is contrary to the law; and if I am to perish, I shall perish!” (Esther 4:15-16)

Esther is not only of strong faith, she is clever and insightful as well. She appeals to the king’s foolish affection for parties, and she opens the door for Haman to betray himself, which he does with aplomb. It is not just a matter of “we won.” The story of Purim is a story of evil based on weakness, and on victory derived from faith and wisdom.

In the end, even the Book of Esther agrees that we should eat. Mordecai instructs the Jewish people that they “were to observe them [these days of Purim] as days of feasting and merrymaking, and as an occasion for sending gifts to one another and presents to the poor.”(Esther 9:22)

So, are these Jewish holidays a matter of “They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat?” Perhaps, although the questions we must ask of our texts reveal that it is never as cut and dry as this. The Jews have many resources on our side, including faith in God, wisdom, and our partnership with God and with fellow Jews. Joseph Telushkin wrote, “The purpose of Jewish existence is not to eat Jewish food, or to tell Jewish jokes, or use Yiddish words. It is to fight evil and reduce suffering in the world.“(in the preface to “The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism” 1986)  Our brains and our neshamot (spirits) often outweigh our brawn as the key to this task.


And we must remember, as we move swiftly from one “let’s eat” holiday to another, that the key to the balance is right at hand. Each week, and each month, we celebrate a holiday in which it is not about the fight, but truly about the harmony. Shabbat and Rosh Chodesh are concrete reminders that being Jewish is not so much about fighting for survival as it is about being in rhythm with the world, being God’s partner in the on-going care and perfection of the world and in the ultimate quest for shalom, peace and wholeness. “More than the Jewish people has kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jewish people.” (Ahad HaAm).

Young children see good guys and bad guys going at each other with every half hour of screen time they view (and we all know that young children get too much screen time). With so many Jewish holidays that pitch bad guys against the Jews, we can teach children to look closer at the sources of good and evil, to take away the enduring understandings that the root of evil is sometimes weakness and fear, and that our task as Jews is to make the world a better place by combating evil with our faith, wisdom and our partnerships with other Jews and with God. The foundation for that faith and wisdom is shalom - peace - and shlei-mute – wholeness – which we strive for each week on Shabbat.

And now, please pass the Hamantaschen. Make mine chocolate chip.