The approach of Purim this year feels more somber than celebratory. It marks the one year anniversary of the pandemic, which started being felt in New York right around Purim; and of course, our country and our world are still very much suffering from the disease, and even though the number of cases is decreasing, many are still sick, struggling and dying. Despite this, we are starting to see promising trends, with the rapid rollout of vaccines leading to signs that the worst of the pandemic may be past, and some sort of return to a more regular social life may be on the horizon. Schools and synagogues are planning safe, appropriate events again, both in buildings and online.
One unavoidable tie between Purim and pandemic is the mask. The Covid mask is both a grim, often uncomfortable reminder of disease, and a life saver, one that many embellish with creative, life-affirming flair. It hides us from each other, making it hard to recognize people we may walk by on the pavement, and it liberates us to have conversations in each other’s proximity when not to wear them could put our lives at risk. Purim masks, which originated in the European carnival of the Middle Ages (see below), enable wearers generally to participate in the creative, life-affirming element. However, read into the Esther story, they contain a darker meaning.
Here are three ways to look at masks, drawn from three books.
In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, sociologist Erving Goffman describes social life in terms of Japanese theater (No and Kabuki). We wear masks all of the time, because different situations require us to act in certain ways, ways that we generally aren’t aware of or don’t think about. Masks aren’t something we put on and take off–that is, we are never without a mask. There is no identity apart from our masks; even when we are alone, our sense of our selves is shaped by our society, our times. In effect, we are always onstage, acting. There is no such thing as a genuinely “authentic self.”
In Rabelais and His World, Russian literary historian Mikhail Bakhtin envisions the medieval spectacle of the carnival as the essential spirit of the novel (which arose later). During carnival celebrations, which lasted for a week or more, people were free to portray people of different social levels. Serfs and peasants could dress up as nobility, while the nobility went slumming. (Think The Prince and the Pauper or Trading Places.) Masks served as a temporary liberation from an oppressive, rigid social hierarchy; it provided a kind of safety valve that enabled people to accept the limitations of their lives by escaping it for a time.
In Megillat Esther, masks are more metaphorical than material; perhaps the closest hint of one is talk of the cosmetics that are applied to Esther before she meets the king. Nonetheless, the book is pervaded with the theme of hiding: people need to hide their motives, their intentions, their true identities. And famously, God is never mentioned in the megillah; in the Talmud (Hullin 139b), Rav Mattana connects this fact with the very name of the book, associating it with the reference to God’s “hidden face” in Deuteronomy 31:18. Masks are a token of oppression, of Esther needing to hide her Jewish identity, her true self, in order to become a Persian queen. Yet the mask also enables Esther to reach a status from which she is able to overturn Haman’s evil decree and save her people; without her initial hiding, most likely she would never have been considered for the role. And God’s hiddenness in Esther mirrors the difficulty we may have in seeing God’s presence in a world without the overt miracles of our early history–and the sense of wholeness and wonder we may find if and when we do see God’s hidden hand.
Whether you will be wearing a Covid mask, a Purim mask, a social mask or all three, may this Purim bring you and your communities a sense of hope and glimmers of liberation.
Originally published at Prizmah.org.