Usually, Purim is just a fun, silly holiday (as it should be) of baking too many hamantaschen, getting costumes together last minute because I try to be prepared but am inevitably too ADHD and rewatching the same Purim story videos with my Sunday school students. Despite the rote, the Purim story is one I deeply appreciate; it is perhaps even one of my favorites. Still, my appreciation for the tale had always occurred on a vague, hypothetical level… That is, until this Purim.
This year, I’m having the surreal experience of realizing how much I truly relate to the Purim story in a tangible, not purely-hypothetical way. On a global scale, the setting of the story and our political landscape have too much overlap for comfort: A “king” with little respect for women who makes light of sexual assault has an easygoing approach to letting his evil toady do more or less whatever he pleases, giving this person way too much influence over the lives and fates of certain groups of people. Said toady wants everyone to idolize him and sing his praises, and plans to censor and punish anyone who criticizes him or who won’t comply. He even wants to blot out certain minority group(s) from existence all together. Oh, and there’s an iconically stupid hat design involved that’s become an important part of the history.
And if I zoom in on a personal level, the parallels are equally unsettling.
Esther hid her Jewish identity, and was able to gain a lot of advantage from being able to “pass” as a general Persian citizen. I’ve always been a passing Jew to the outside world, but even more than my Jewish identity, I’ve been able to keep my queer identity vague and disguised. While it’s important to do what you need to do in order to be safe in any given space, lately there’s a thought I haven’t been able to stop mulling over: Wait a minute — I’m one of the now-missing letters in LGB(TQ). I’m not sure half the people I see regularly even know I’m the Q. I feel uneasy about only occupying that part of myself when it’s convenient (and rarely even then), when many don’t have that luxury. Is now the most sensible time for me to stay neutral and “safe” about my identity — or should I actually be showing up as a more openly queer person than I ever have before? In other words, if the response to Jewish hate is to be more proud and celebratory of being Jewish, then isn’t the response to gay hate to be gayer than ever?
Sure, there’s way less direct pressure on me than there was on Queen Esther, to whom Mordechai said (to paraphrase): “If you don’t do it, someone else will. But what kind of person will you be if you had the opportunity but you passed on it?” But I can’t ignore the relentless pressure of my own conscience, questioning: What kind of person will I be? I could so easily rebuff my inner monologue, telling myself: “I’m just one person. There are tons of openly queer, trans and allied activists out there advocating. Someone out there IS handling it, it doesn’t have to disrupt my comfortable daily life. My involvement or lack thereof makes no real impact.” But my own Jewish values are at odds with this idea — as is the story of Purim, which is recorded in one of only two books of the Tanakh that are named after a female protagonist. In this case, a single Jewish woman chose to step out of hiding and show up, which impacted her people’s history so indelibly that she is memorialized in the “Book of Esther.” I personally am not in an immediate life-or-death situation like Queen Esther, but many — particularly trans and gender nonconforming people — are.
Yet the question remains: What can I do? I didn’t fully come out of the closet to my own self until recently; I grew up feeling like I was just an alien version of a girl who was “bad” at being feminine or romantic. It feels familiar to keep to myself, quietly feeling like an outcast while making myself outwardly palatable to the society around me. It feels safe to know that I can easily pass as a cisgender straight white woman when shit hits the fan. This safe familiarity is extremely tempting. Because owning certain parts of our identities is scary and challenging — like when I openly requested at work that people address me as “Teacher Kate” instead of Ms. Kate and shared that my pronouns are she/they. Often, I feel like an imposter when someone describes me with “they” pronouns and I wonder: Is it hard for me to be honored for who I am by someone else if I’m not prioritizing honoring my own identity that way? Staying hidden is safe, but it’s also painfully obliterating.
I could easily stay safe. Quiet. Small. But what about all the openly and closeted queer and trans kids I’m around on a regular basis, whether friends of my child from school, older siblings of my preschool students, or madrichim (counselors in training) at the Jewish Sunday school at which I teach? I’m terrified of my queerness having a negative social impact on my own kid… but what if the negative impact will come from having a parent who quietly sweeps themself under the rug while he’s figuring out his own identity and how to show up in the world?
Suddenly, I’m noticing all these vulnerable people around me. Now more than ever, don’t they need someone older to look to for hope and validation about their own existence and their own futures? It’s on me to decide how I want to model for them to show up as a queer Jewish person in a world that has become as chaotic, upside-down and inside-out as the Purim story.
A challenge still remains, however: I don’t really know how to show up as my whole self, or what it means to be a queer Jew in my own life. I wonder if Queen Esther felt at a similar loss for what it looked like to be a royal Jew in an antisemitic palace? But she’s the star of the show because she did it when she was scared, before she was ready. Now, her heavy, high-stakes, somber crisis of identity has become a celebration of pure unbridled, irreverent joy that has spanned eras.
Maybe that’s my starting point: Maybe right now it’s of life and death importance to promote and celebrate queer joy — and to truly be joyous. Maybe that means wearing the bright, queer David Bowie-inspired fashions I dream of but never purchase because I hate drawing attention to myself. Maybe it’s finally finding the other queer people in my new Jewish community and doing something together purely for the sake of fun. Maybe it’s even handing out Chappell Roan-themed mishloach manot this Purim that include Pony Club-pink hamantaschen, to visibly spread some queer joy to everyone else’s Purim celebrations, too. It’s terrifying and easier said than done when you are used to being quietly somber… But this Purim, I want to loudly choose joy.
