Today is the Jewish festival of Purim. That’s nice. What’s Purim? Ahhh, it’s a celebration. Of… well, pretty much a celebration of the Jewish condition. Purim basically means ‘Tsurus’ or ‘Aggro’, as most Jewish festivals do. You see, its all about King Ahasuerus and Queen Esther…

This was in ancient Persia in about 400BC!! Yes, BC, before the dinosaurs. Almost. And Persia was still called Persia and was a great place to be; enlightened, a home of education, philosophy, architecture and all the wonders which ceased suddenly when the Clash released ‘Rock the Kasbah’ and Persia turned into Iran. They banned culture, imposed draconian measures on their population, wrapped the women up in black and re-introduced all those lovely biblical activities like beheadings, stoning, industrialised misogyny, all under the heading of ‘God’s will’.

So the King sacked his old Queen (literally ‘old Queen’, not a reference to Quentin Crisp or Ian McKellen) and chose Esther as his new one, after she won a beauty contest. (I’d be interested to know if they still have beauty contests in modern day ‘Persia’). Pretty much like they choose Queens today in most countries. Esther heard about a plot to kill the king and told her cousin, Mordechai about it. The King’s head dude, Haman, was a real mutha who wanted to kill all Jews. Esther saved the day, and her people, Haman was hanged and we survived until the next catastrophe.

Which run in a pretty much unbroken line up to today. Always someone wanting to kill all the Jews, normally, but by no means exclusively, Iran.

Thus Purim celebrates survival. As does Passover and… possibly some others. And just think; if we didn’t have Purim, there’d be no Blazing Saddles! Not one Woody Allen film would exist! The Jewish Chronicle would just be ‘The Chronicle’ and ‘andysglasses’ would just be ‘glasses’! What an horrendous dystopia that would be.

It’s traditional to tell the story of Purim and every time the name ‘Haman’ crops up you shout and boo and bang bangy things and make lots of noise. You also dress up. Mainly as Queen Esther but I couldn’t get my dress zipped up so I’m dressed as an old man in tennis gear instead.

Happy Purim

A xxxx