Essay - Wrestling with Esther: Purim Spiels, Gender, and Political Dissidence

[Felix]

ZEEK
Emily Nepon
http://zeek.forward.com/articles/117515/

Purim's tale is a warning with another warning wrapped inside, a liberation that isn't liberating, and it begs us to create space for solutions that don't entail easy answers. Wrestling with Esther offers her a chance for meaningful heroism without a brutal legacy, and the insights of these strategic theatrical misunderstandings offer us a path towards transformation

For those of us who don't fit the mainstream Jewish community norms, Purim has become an opportunity to come out of the corners and challenge our own community by manifesting our fabulous otherness, our queerness. On all other nights, the institutional Jewish community displays a false homogenous front on the issue of supporting Zionism. And on all other nights, homophobia and transphobia are still prevalent in our community. On Purim those of us who, like Pesach's wicked child, don't tow those party lines, exhibit our politics and our true queer lives without fear of rejection and repression. (Or so we hope.)