By Rabbi Eli Birnbaum, Head of Community Development, Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue
Years ago, when I was a student in Talmudic College, I was invited to join the Purim Seudah (festive meal) at my teacher’s home. The doorbell rang incessantly with neighbours dropping off Mishloach Manot (edible treats customarily given on Purim), people collecting Tzedakah (charity) and my fellow students dancing around the heaving table.
Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, with music pumping and wine flowing, our esteemed Rabbi rose to his feet, switched off the music, walked over to his well-adorned bookshelf and took down a volume covering the laws of Pesach.
Much to our amazement, he began to deliver a synopsis of the laws of cleaning the house for chametz, something that stood at a jarring contrast to the mess of not-kosher-for-Passover food all over the dining room. After five minutes, he returned the book to its shelf and raised his glass:
“The Talmud (Pesachim 6a) teaches us: thirty days before Passover, one must begin to study the laws and details of that festival. L’chaim to all.”
With that, he sat down.
At first glance, this Talmudic dictum seems eminently sensible. In many households, the mention of the word ‘Passover’ inspires sheer panic. Kitchens need scrubbing, food needs buying, and children need conscripting for the annual pantomime of ‘The Life of a Pretzel – Boldly Going Where no Leaven Has Gone Before’. So, best get started early, right?
The problem is, and this is what inspired my Rabbi’s surprising mid-meal interruption, thirty days before Passover is…Purim!
Our sages knew this well. Purim occurred barely a few generations before the Talmud was written. Furthermore: the Talmud was compiled in the heartlands of Persia – the location of the entire Purim story! And yet, they insisted that into the manic celebration must step an uninvited guest: Interrupt Purim with a dash of Pesach.
Intriguingly, the interruption is not one-way.
“So Esther said in reply to Mordechai: Go then, assemble all the Jews of Shushan, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days. Night and day, my maids and I will also fast. And then I will stand before the King even though it is unlawful.” (Esther, 4:15-16)
The Fast of Esther, nowadays observed on the eve of Purim, commemorates those days of penitence decreed by the heroine of the Purim story as she prepared to beseech Achashverosh on behalf of her people.
But her original fast was not merely one day. It was three. And those three days did not occur in the month of Adar. According to the Talmud (Megillah 15a, cf. Rashi there), Esther decreed the fast across the 14th, 15th and 16th days of the month of Nissan. In other words: the original Fast of Esther coincided with Pesach!
That year, Seder night simply did not happen. The eve of Passover as well as the first two days of the festival were marked by intense mourning and abstinence from food or drink, as the need to sow the seeds for the Purim miracle yet to come overrode the desire to celebrate the Pesach miracle long past. Here we arrive at quite the dilemma:
Our sages insist that Passover must encroach on Purim through the study of its laws. Esther insisted that Purim’s penitent prelude encroach on Pesach. To what end are these two festivals so deliberately intertwined?