Why Does Jewish Kids’ Favorite Holiday Get Violent In Israel?
Image by Getty Images
By Naomi Zeveloff March 9, 2017
Purim is the Israeli Halloween. Pop-up costume shops appear in the weeks ahead, children dress up for school and hamantaschen are as ubiquitous as mini Snickers bars.
But there’s a darker side to the holiday, too. The Purim story is a tale of revenge. After Esther and Mordechai foil Haman’s plot to kill the Jews, they exact a painful revenge on their Persian enemies.
On Purim, some extremist Jews take the story literally, linking the ancient Amalekites, the anti-Semitic tribe to which Haman belonged, to modern-day Palestinians.
Over the years, there have been reports of violent attacks against Arabs on Purim perpetrated by Jews, and attacks on Jews by Palestinians. The most notorious event was in 1994, when Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
For this year’s Purim, some Israeli kids are dressing as Elor Azaria, the Israeli soldier who killed a prone Palestinian suspect. Many Israelis view him as a hero, wrongfully punished for protecting the nation.
But Israeli President Reuven Rivlin sang a Purim song at an event this week to honor Jehan Jaber, an Arab Hebrew teacher in Taibe.
Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected]
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
