Chanukah and Purim two joyous holidays

Chanukah and Purim

Dovid Eidensohn

We are now in the fifth day of Chanukah, the eight-day festival of lights. Chanukah commemorates the conquest by the religious Jews in Israel of the Greeks who tormented Israel and polluted the Holy Temple in the Second Temple Period.

Interestingly enough, Chanukah, which comes out this year from December 3-10, and is a holiday of great happiness and festivity, comes not long before another holiday, which, as would be appropriate, is also a holiday of great happiness and festivity, Purim,

Purim falls this year on Thursday, March 21, 2019. Both Chanukah and Purim are holidays of great happiness and festivity, but it would seem that Purim may be the senior member of the two. We can infer this possibly from the holy day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Fasting and Prayer that takes place ten days after Rosh HaShana.

The Holy Day of Yom Kippur is actually Yom KiPurim, meaning in Hebrew, “The Day similar to Purim.” This means probably that Yom Kippur, with all of its mighty holiness and prayer, is actually not as great a holiday as Purim. This is especially notable because Purim and Chanukah are both rabbinical holidays not Torah holidays. If Yom Kippur, or Yom KiPurim, is surely a very holy Torah day of prayer and penitence, it would seem very strange that it only compares somehow but in an inferior manner to a holiday which is not a Torah holiday but a rabbinical one. Indeed, Chanukah and Purim, although they come about only a few months apart, are essentially of rabbinical not Torah status. How then can the name Yom KiPurim, meaning, a “Day like Purim” describes such a holy and mighty day as Yom Kippur, perhaps the holiest day of the year?

The question becomes deeper when we examine what is done to celebrate Purim. On Chanukah we find families visiting each other and exchanging fine foods and gifts. It is a very spiritual but happy time. But Purim is a time known by many people of a time to do a great amount of drinking liquor so that many people just pass out on the floor. This is surely a weird way to honor a holiday that seems to outrank Yom KiPurim!

One way to understand this is a story I heard about a Monsey Jew who would empty many full checkbooks on Purim for the large amount of people who would come to his home on Purim. So, maybe people drink and eat a lot on Purim and really enjoy the day, but their pockets are emptied to perform kindness, perhaps the greatest of the good deeds. Yes, Yom KiPurim is a holy day of crying and penitence, of remembering sins and resolving to do better next time, and that is surely a wonderful time when an entire nation raps upon the doors of heaven with sincere suffering for their various sins. But something perhaps higher than all of this is when people deal directly with HaShem thanking Him for the great kindness He bestows upon them, and their families, and His gift of His Holy Torah to them. It is a time when all Jews, on Purim, realize the Kindness of Heaven, in their lives, in their families, and think deeply into what it means to thank HaShem for this wonderful kindness, a kindness which brings them to respond with kindness to those who need their money and their smiles and their love.