The holiday of Purim is all about surprises, all about reversals of fortune. As the Yiddish expression goes, “Der mentsh trakht un g-t lakht,” People make plans, and G-d thinks it’s funny.” (literally, “Man plans and G-d laughs.”) In the Megillah, the Book of Esther, the king wants to replace his disobedient wife Vashti with a more subservient and compliant wife. He ends up with Esther, who wraps him around her little finger. Haman thinks the king wants to honor him, and suggests lavish rewards for the object of the king’s favor; but the king orders him to heap those rewards on his arch-rival Mordechai. The enemies of the Jews intended to exterminate them; but at the last minute, the king gives the Jews the right to defend themselves and do to their enemies what the enemies thought to do to the Jews. And, of course, the greatest reversal in the Book of Esther—Haman is hung on the very gallows on which he intended to hang Mordechai.
All of that is reflected in the Al hanisim prayer, added to the Amidah on Purim. The text talks about how “Haman sought to destroy all the Jews….but You in your great mercy thwarted his plans, and broke up his plot, and visited upon him what he had planned for others.”
Actually, though, in a masterpiece of irony, this prayer itself contains the greatest reversal of them all, a dramatic twist that still impacts our lives. It begins “We thank You for the miraculous deliverance, for the heroism, and for the triumphs in battle that You did for our ancestors in those days at this time….”; and concludes, as mentioned above, with a reference to G-d’s “great mercy.” All this sounds normal enough for a siddur, until we remember that the Book of Esther never mentions G-d’s name, much less G-d’s actions. To all appearances, only human beings are involved in the story. Whether wise or foolish, courageous or cowardly, good or evil, they appear to be on their own, without divine intervention.
Just like us.
The contrast between the Book of Esther and the Al Hanisim prayer brings into focus the great theological quandary of our time: are we left to our own devices, to use our own skills to (just barely) survive the machinations of our genocidal enemies? Or is there an invisible and merciful hand guiding our affairs and coming to our aid? I have my thoughts on that question, but at the least I can cite the great Swedish theologian Henry Cöster: Berättelsen befriar–the telling of the story itself sets in motion the very divine forces it invokes.
And if it turns out that it is humanity’s creativity that gives rise to those divine forces, rather than the more common view that it is the divine forces that give rise to humanity, well…what did you expect? This is about Purim, the holiday of surprises and reversals.