Pourim : un peuple en fête (malgré tout)

Summary

The article reflects on an open contradiction between the festival of Purim, characterized by the celebration of excess that marks the most hedonistic and eccentric festivity of the Hebrew calendar, and the scroll of Esther, from which the festival originates – a text that reflects the anxiety of a people feeling rejected in exile and that goes so far as to theorize the right to blood vengeance when their very existence is threatened. By exploring certain textual elements of the narrative and some culinary traditions associated with the festival, the article brings to light a Jewish reflection on coexistence and the right to difference emerging from the celebration of Purim. The biblical book, in which the divine is absent – at least in its Masoretic Text – thus reflects on the eternal fear of the people of Israel, who live in an unstable situation between belonging and exclusion, assimilation and sectarianism, homogeneity and difference. It also enshrines the principle that only the full recognition of the other’s status as other and their right to difference can serve as the foundation for social coexistence.