An annual outlet for the pressure cooker of the medieval Jewish community, the Purim spiel subtly subverts the power structures of Jewish society, making a mockery of their authority

Reb Yeshaya Priwes was not enamored of the Purim players, or of their plays. He had no liking for simple people, and theater was certainly not his scene. When Purim came, however, he had no choice but to accept the coarse “players” cavorting over his wax-polished floors as a necessary evil, shattering the accustomed silence that reigned supreme throughout the year. The Purim plays and songs could not make him bat an eye, let alone betray him into the slightest show of mirth. They were just a nuisance. But he had no choice. Purim. It was their day. Nonetheless, Reb Yeshaya would have the merrymaking cut short and the money distributed together with slices of sweet challah – all without allowing his warm, manicured fingers to come into direct contact with the clumsy hands of the Purim players. (Yehiel Yeshaya Trunk, Poland: Memories and Pictures, p. 91 [Hebrew])

 

Unwanted Guests

This was the scene described in Yehiel Yeshaya Trunk’s memoirs: poor players crowding the home of one of Warsaw’s wealthy Jews at the end of the 19th century. On Purim, the closed doors of the Priwes mansion were opened to the masses, and they poured in to perform plays such as The Sale of Joseph and Ahasuerus in the magnate’s open house. It was their privilege, on this one occasion, to shake his hand, drink a le-haim of his schnapps, and gaze in amazement at the earrings and necklaces adorning the women of the household.

The players at these performances were no professionals. They generally came from the lower echelons of Jewish society: yeshiva students, tradesmen and their apprentices, entertainers, klezmer musicians, and professional beggars. “Invading” the homes of the upper middle class, they would perform their plays, collecting money or leftovers as payment. The encounters brought two very different strata of society in contact with each other, and were at times rife with class tensions.

The earliest extant text of a complete Purim spiel (or play, in Yiddish) dates from the end of the 17th century. As this was popular theater, with a minimal script and a good deal of improvisation, this text is probably not strictly representative of the actual performance, nor is it a clear indication that purim spiels were already a well-known phenomenon. Ahuva Belkin, author of The Purim Spiel: Studies in Popular Jewish Theater, suggests that such performances had already begun to take shape two hundred years earlier, in the 15th century. Performed in Yiddish, the subjects were usually free (and often riotous) adaptations of Bible stories. The megilla itself was obviously a constant favorite, but the stories of Joseph, David and Goliath, and even the Binding of Isaac, were equally popular.

 

Subversive Carnival

Purim belonged to the masses, whether Yeshaya Priwes liked it or not. Communal solidarity is deeply embedded within the Purim obligations of sending food parcels to fellow Jews and distributing alms, but the Purim spiel went one step further, addressing class conflicts. The spiel drew inspiration from other carnival festivities, widespread in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period, such as the Comedia della Arte, in which such characters as Fool, Doctor, Harlequin, and Pulcinella (the origin of the British Punch) wrought havoc on the established hierarchy of society. The carnival undermined the stable power of authority, and in the fantasy world created by carnival theater, it was overturned completely.

Researchers debate whether the carnivals served merely as a pressure valve, releasing class tensions, or whether they also offered truly revolutionary opportunities. Did the temporary relaxation serve only to prolong a repressive social hierarchy, or by introducing the possibility of imagining change, did it help to engender revolution? Whatever the case, the driving forces behind the Purim spiel were not content with turning the bourgeois homes of wealthy Jews into the carnival domain of the lower classes; the spiel also tended to dismantle the power structures within Jewish society, bursting the balloon of their authority.

Although the Purim spiels were mostly faithful to the general megilla narrative – Vashti’s fall and Esther’s rise, the decree against the Jews, and their victory over their enemies – the actors were not afraid to modify the biblical text. Moreover, the humor in these performances was far from refined or cultured. For contemporary readers, many of whom have a somewhat stilted image of past Jewish communities and their traditions, exposure to the Purim spiel scripts may be a rather surprising, even disturbing experience.

 

The Joke’s on Us

Of all the characters in the book of Esther, in the Purim spiel it is actually Mordecai the Jew who pokes fun at everything normally sacred. Unlike the wise, dignified Mordecai whose long, white beard and royal blue raiment are so familiar from illustrated megillas and children’s costumes, the Mordecai of the Purim spiel is generally a grotesque joker. In a spiel performed in the Mohilev district of Russia, for example, Mordecai was portrayed as the wandering Jew:

A poor man, a beggar, at every wedding and bris / where nothing is lacking / it’s all on the plate / what a picture – just look at him / with the hump on his back / looking down at the ground. (Belkin, The Purim Spiel, pp. 125–6)