Purim: A Celebration of Textuality

In his 1994 article, Reading and Carnival: On the Semiotics of Purim (Poetics Today, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 55-74), the late Harold Fisch (1923-2001), Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Bar-Ilan University, describes the significance of reading, textuality in the practice of the reading of the Megillah as the central ritual of the holiday of Purim.

"[T]he Book of Esther is itself full of acts of writing and reading... It is thus a scroll about scrolls, about their writing and the reading. And this is emphasized in the ritual by the expressive gesture of lifting up the scroll from which one is reading at the words 'al ken 'al kol dibrey ha'iggeret hazzot (therefore because of all the words of this letter [9:26]), "this letter" being taken as the very document from which one is actually reading. One celebrates an occasion marked by the centrality of written records with a reading-performance in which one reads what is written about reading what is written. From this point of view, the Purim ritual seems self-referential to an extreme degree...."

"Recognition of the scroll by the rabbis thus evidently followed from its enormous appeal for the people (see Zeitlin 1931: 133). It is not difficult to see what attracted them. They were obviously fascinated by the marvelous story, with its humor, suspense, colorfulness, skillful repetitions, and elevated diction of royal pomp and power-diction which becomes self-parodying when that pomp and power are exposed as foolishness. And then there is the wonderfully ironic turnabout when Mordecai, dressed in the royal regalia and riding the horse, is conducted by Haman through the main square of Shushan. This is not just the triumph of Mordecai; it is the triumph of language. We need look no further for a sign that Esther is an inspired text than the fact that it so powerfully inspires its readers and auditor. Not surprisingly, the celebration of Purim is a celebration of textuality, and the rabbis were surely responding to popular demand when they placed the reading of the scroll at the very heart of the celebration, thereby confirming from "above" what had been accepted "below." Purim is only secondarily a festival of eating and drinking, of masquerade and misrule; it is above all and before all a celebration of the joy of the text."