Many schools are questioning whether, in light of the atrocities of October 7th and the ongoing war, they should proceed with their regular Purim shenanigans this year. Administrators and teachers wonder whether they should scale back their usual activities or whether they should skip the celebration altogether with the hope that Purim festivities will be back in force next year.

The limited sources on celebrating rabbinic holidays in light of tragic circumstances seem to indicate that not only should we celebrate despite the current situation in Israel and with Jews around the world, we should celebrate specifically because of it!

The rabbis in the Talmud appeared to indicate that events affirming life take precedence over those involved with death. In Ketubot 17a, we find:

תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: מַעֲבִירִין אֶת הַמֵּת מִלִּפְנֵי כַלָּה. וְזֶה וָזֶה מִלִּפְנֵי מֶלֶךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל.

The Sages taught: One reroutes the funeral procession for burial of a corpse to yield before the wedding procession of a bride. And both this, the funeral procession, and that, the wedding procession, yield before a king of Israel.

The Talmud here indicates that a personal celebration trumps a personal tragedy and a national event trumps both. Hence, our national celebration of God saving us in the past, as will invariably happen again now, should indeed take place.

The Peninei Halakhah (21st Century Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, Rosh Yeshiva and rabbi of the community of Har Bracha), Zemanim 14:5 offers this insight. He posits that every time we encounter an enemy who wants to destroy us, that enemy is an embodiment of Amalek, whom we are commanded to obliterate. Celebrating Purim is part of the fulfillment of that mitzvah. We duly commemorate each atrocity–such as the Crusades, the 17th-19th century pogroms in Eastern Europe, and all of the others, including the Holocaust–during the period of time between Passover and Shavuot known as Sefirah. Therefore, we celebrate Purim to mark the overturning of our enemies' plans to wipe out the Jewish people, even as we are suffering.

Further, because we are loyal to God and the Torah, despite any trials and tribulations that we may experience, we celebrate the rabbinic holidays–Chanukah and Purim–with their concomitant mitzvot and blessings. The following story appears in Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust by Yaffa Eliach (pp. 13-15) about the first night of Chanukah in Bergen Belsen, a story she heard directly from the Bluzhover Rav:

A jug of oil was not to be found, no candle was in sight, and a hanukkiah belonged to the distant past. Instead, a wooden clog, the shoe of one of the inmates, became a hanukkiah; strings pulled from a concentration camp uniform, a wick; and the black camp shoe polish, pure oil.

Not far from the heaps of the bodies, the living skeletons assembled to participate in the kindling of Hanukkah lights.

The Rabbi of Bluzhov lit the first light and chanted the first two blessings in his pleasant voice, and the festive melody was filled with sorrow and pain. When he was about to recite the third blessing, he stopped, turned his head, and looked around as if he were searching for something.

But immediately, he turned his face back to the quivering small lights, and in a strong, reassuring, comforting voice, chanted the third blessing, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, and hast preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season.”

…As soon as the Rabbi of Bluzhov had finished the ceremony of kindling the lights, [a man] elbowed his way to the rabbi and said, “Spira, you are a clever and honest person. I can understand your need to light Hanukkah candles in these wretched times. I can even understand the historical note of the second blessing, ‘Who wroughtest miracles for our fathers in the days of old, at this season.’ But the fact that you recited the third blessing is beyond me. How could you thank God and say, ‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, and hast preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season’? How could you say it when hundreds of dead Jewish bodies are literally lying within the shadows of the Hanukkah lights, when thousands of living Jewish skeletons are walking around in camp, and millions more are being massacred? For this, you are thankful to God? For this, you praise the Lord? This you call ‘keeping us alive’?”

“You are a hundred percent right,” said the rabbi. “When I reached the third blessing, I also hesitated, and asked myself, what should I do with this blessing? I turned my head in order to ask the Rabbi of Zaner and other distinguished rabbis who were standing near me if indeed I might recite the blessing. But just as I was turning my head, I noticed that behind a throng was standing, a large crowd of living Jews, their faces expressing faith, devotion, and concentration as they were listening to the rite of the kindling of the Hanukkah lights. I said to myself, if God, blessed be He, has such a nation that at times like these, when during the lighting of the Hanukkah lights, they see in front of them the heaps of bodies of their beloved fathers, brothers, and sons, and death is looking from every corner, if despite all that, they stand in throngs and with devotion listening to the Hanukkah blessing ‘Who wroughtest miracles for our fathers in the days of old, at this season’; if indeed I was blessed to see such a people with so much faith and fervor, then I am under a special obligation to recite the third blessing.”

Mi K’amcha Yisrael? Who is like Your–loyal, devoted, and resilient–people, God?

Finally, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, obm, opines:

It seems to me that the simcha we celebrate throughout the month of Adar is different from the normal joy we feel when something good and positive has happened to us or our people. That is expressive joy. The simcha of Adar, by contrast, is therapeutic joy.

Imagine what it is to be part of a people that had once heard the command issued against them: “to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews – young and old, women and children – on a single day” (Esther 3:13). We who live after the Holocaust, who have met survivors, heard their testimony, seen the photographs and documentaries and memorials, know the answer to that question. On Purim the Final Solution was averted. But it had been pronounced. Ever afterward, Jews knew their vulnerability. The very existence of Purim in our historical memory is traumatic.

The Jewish response to trauma is counterintuitive and extraordinary. You defeat fear by joy. You conquer terror by collective celebration. You prepare a festive meal, invite guests, give gifts to friends. While the story is being told, you make a rumbustious noise as if not only to blot out the memory of Amalek, but to make a joke out of the whole episode. You wear masks. You drink a little too much. You make a Purim spiel.

Precisely because the threat was so serious, you refuse to be serious – and in that refusal you are doing something very serious indeed. You are denying your enemies a victory. You are declaring that you will not be intimidated. As the date of the scheduled destruction approaches, you surround yourself with the single most effective antidote to fear: joy in life itself. As the three-sentence summary of Jewish history puts it: “They tried to destroy us. We survived. Let’s eat.” Humour is the Jewish way of defeating hate. What you can laugh at, you cannot be held captive by.

To be sure, there are additional opinions maintaining that one should not celebrate, especially publicly, during wartime, or perhaps tamp down our festivities. We have presented to you those opinions that resonate most with us, especially as they relate to educating our children and inculcating into them a sense of pride in Jewish resilience and gratitude to God for preserving our nation so many times.

So this Purim, fellow educators and Jewish day school stakeholders, let us celebrate Purim robustly, invoking therapeutic joy among ourselves and our students, elevating life over death, and obliterating Amalek, in the limited way we are able to today, through our hearty observance of Purim.