Tonight (March 6, 2023) is the beginning of Purim, a raucous holiday celebrating the victory of the Jews of Persia over Haman, an evil minister in the king's court who sought to annihilate the Jews. There may not be a lot of history to the story, but like most Bible stories, there are lessons for today. 5783 is the year on the Jewish calendar.
In the story, King Ahasuerus banishes his queen, Vashti, because she refused to dance for his friends at a drunken banquet. When I was a child, Vashti was evil, but today, she is a feminist icon. To replace her, the king holds a beauty contest, and chooses Esther, ward of her uncle, Mordechai, and a Jew. All of this is highly unlikely, and the names Esther and Mordechai are too close for comfort to Persian Goddess and God, Astarte and Marduk. Still, it's a holiday for fun, near Mardi Gras in spirit and time of year.
My mother died on Purim morning twenty years ago. That year, Purim was March 18. She was in hospice care in suburban Baltimore. I had been in town for her 75th birthday in February, and I suffered a heart attack at her house on February 9. The next day, her birthday, she spent much of the day visiting me in cardiac intensive care at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. I was supposed to go back to Los Angeles on the 11th, but I was delayed until the 22nd. I had to allow the airline to look at my medical records, because I had a special "short-term" fare.
I didn't expect, ever, to live this long, and the mystical side of me thinks that my Mom has somehow worked things from the next world to keep me going. I have lots of health problems, but my heart is still ticking along, better than the hearts of most men my age.
This August, I will be the age my mom was when she was diagnosed with the cancer that took her life. She lived fifteen months after that, which would make me that age in December 2024. Not that far away.
I told students last year during my campaign for U.S. Congress that this campaign was my "culmination project," something students work on to graduate. I meant at the time that I would be ready to leave this world after that. I've been wrong about predicting my imminent demise before, so maybe I'll just have to reinvent myself.
My husband, Rabbi Joe has been talking about moving away from here. He said "We have nothing left to prove here." That's true, and the current political climate in West Virginia makes me think it might be wise to leave. Joe, who was born in Buffalo, only wants live somewhere warm where we know people. Still, I've made friends throughout West Virginia in my run for Congress, and I feel some obligation to those people, and to the Democratic state delegates from Morgantown and other activists who are working to change the culture here.
Seventy-three has been hard on me physically and emotionally, and I've had to step back from political and social events just from a lack of strength. I'm doing a little better now. I don't expect to be where I was twenty years ago, endurance-wise.
I have started back at the gym, and on days when I can, I run a bit in the neighborhood. Some days I can't do it. I'd like to get back on my bike, which I haven't been on since May when I had an accident and injured my leg. I'm also back to writing letters to the editor and resuming my travels to nearby cities.
We're supposed to go to Chabad, the Orthodox group in town, for dinner in the late afternoon tomorrow, and we had one of Joe's parody plays last Saturday night, where he rewrites some old Broadway musical to (almost) fit the story of Purim. This year it was a parody of The Pajama Game. It's both brilliant and crazy, but always fun. And we visited a nursing home today to sing Purim songs, visit with the people there and have hamantaschen, the triangular cookies associated with Purim. I used to dread seeing people in such bad shape, but now I enjoy talking to them, and don't see much difference between them and me.
In the Purim story, we are saved from the evil Haman by Esther and Mordechai, and we celebrate our victory over our enemies. But in The Washington Post this past Sunday, there was a review of a book about diaries people kept in The Netherlands during World War II, most famously Anne Frank, but also diaries kept by Nazi leaders and other regular citizens. There is a picture of Jews in Amsterdam, the men in suits and the women in dresses, being led to a central point in Amsterdam, where they will be shipped to concentration camps and murdered. The people in the picture look shockingly modern, and this was only six years before I was born. We don't always win out over our enemies.
In another part of the paper was an article about The Proud Boys, who are being investigated by the Federal Courts for organizing the January 6 events, probably egged on by the former President. One of the star witnesses has a last name that also belongs to cousins from the Italian side of my family. I looked up his picture to see if he could possibly be related, and sure enough, he's short, dark and bald-headed. If he is in that family, I wonder if his White supremacist friends know he had a Jewish great-grandmother.
I'm just ranting now, so I'll stop. I wish everyone a happy and festive Purim, a reminder that we have to fight for our right to be who we really are, and confront the bigots who want to erase us.
