I have seen many people who go to a megillah reading in khakis and a button-down. Perhaps they were coming straight from work. Perhaps they weren’t in the mood and were tired. Honestly, this is reasonable.
However, these folks miss a huge opportunity when they don’t put on a mask during the holiday and be goofy. I feel that it is vital for every Jew to be goofy on Purim.
We need to be silly.
Just like Purim as a whole, a story of being upside down, one of the many ironies of our lives is that we put a mask on every day.
Sometimes, we pretend we are happy when we are not, and sometimes, when we are happy, we restrain our smiles. At work, we put on a professional mask. Sometimes, we bring energy to a situation when we are otherwise exhausted. We have the social conventions that we are expected to follow, which is its own mask.
I call these hidden masks, whether it be in school, the workplace, or amongst our friends: societal masks. We wear our societal masks in order to make everyone else’s life easier. And we do it without realizing it.
I remember sitting in a Zoom class during COVID and sending text messages to friends with a joke, just to try to get them to laugh in class. We had to keep serious faces on camera and focus on the material in front of us, but we also needed that comic relief. There was so much stress from the pandemic which had killed hundreds of thousands, changed our lives, and confined us to our homes. Our lives were sobering and we were often discussing and learning somber material.
That classroom comic relief was designed to pierce that societal mask and allow us to engage the part of ourselves that wanted to be silly.
In my professional life, as a chaplain in the military, many people have come into my office to talk about their struggles. The root of these struggles comes from the emotional and mental energy of pretending everything is fine when it isn’t.
These individuals will be bubbly and energetic, smiling to those at the reception desk and the moment my office door is closed, they slump onto my couch and burst into tears. I don’t even get the opportunity to say “hello” or “good morning” first!
They cry because they no longer have to pretend. Their mask is off. Ask any serious actor, pretending to be someone you aren’t is draining. Not only are people unhappy, they are further weighed down because they have to pretend to be happy.
What alarms me the most is how many people don’t come to my office and don’t talk to their rabbi, therapist, counselor, or other trusted confidante about what’s going on behind their societal masks.
When we have to be a heart surgeon, a sanitation worker, or a private in the Army; we have to do a job and there are expectations that we need to impress or confront.
Yet within each of us, there is a silly part that we do not indulge.
The heart surgeon may love salsa dancing, and the sanitation worker is an avid comic book collector, and the private is a guitar fiend. But they don’t bring that part of their lives to work and their coworkers. This is yet a further example of our societal masks.
Judaism is full of serious issues, like property damage, divorce, and antisemitism. Jewish history is frequently marked by tragedy after tragedy after tragedy. We steep ourselves in remembering the somber past. We as a people have that lens of seriousness as we go through our lives and how we view our future. Jews walk around constantly with these societal masks.
Yet, on Purim we turn this upside down. We are able to cut through to the person we truly are on the inside.
It is in this state, while wearing our physical masks that we allow ourselves to remove our societal masks. By doing this we are able to who we want to be, and that we are able to find ecstasy in our souls. While acting as our true and honest selves we allow for a sense of self-revelation. The removal of social conventions allows us to feel liberated and exuberant.
Maybe this year, I’ll indulge the guitar-playing side of me? Or perhaps, I can dress up as my favorite comic book character instead of Mordecai. How can we ever truly connect to that which is holy, our souls, when we conceal it?
In the hustle and bustle of day to day life, we might be thinking about getting out of work at the right time to get to shul, Amazon delivering your toddler’s costumes on time, and a million other things about our Purim celebrations. We can get so caught up in getting everything about Purim and its logistics in our lives that we can miss the broader point.
These questions miss the point of Purim: to be silly.
I like Purim and its accompanying laws and the relevant planning of the reading and the party as much as the next nerdy rabbi. In the case of Purim, we need to be able to take a breath and just let go.
If we are so focused on the details, we can’t see the joy of community, defeat of the genocidal Haman (hiss!), cooky costumes, making noise, food, and drink. The point is to be together and to allow ourselves to be who we were. To remove the societal mask we wear every day throughout the year, and let our physical mask reveal our divine soul that is within us. The unique soul that God gave each and every one of us at birth.
The beautiful thing about Purim is that it allows us to take a step back and not to take ourselves too seriously. The Book of Esther exemplifies this ridiculousness. The Book of Esther is a goofy book. Purim is a goofy holiday. We are goofy people. We should act like it!
This Purim, we absolutely should put on our physical masks, our make-up, and our costumes. I hope that Purim can allow for us to not only rejoice in community, but also rejoice in removing our societal masks.
Be goofy!
