Many years ago, while living in Israel, I discovered that observant Jews have at least two different ways of dealing with the feast of Purim. Because Purim occurs on two different days in Israel - the fourteenth day of Adar in most of the country and on the fifteenth day of Adar in walled cities - it's possible to either celebrate Purim for one day, for two days or not at all. So how do people go about doing this?

It's really quite simple. I have to begin by saying that most people celebrate Purim on one day or the other, depending on where they live. If you live in Tel Aviv you celebrate the regular Purim on the fourteenth of Adar and if you live in Jerusalem or Tiberias, you celebrate Shushan Purim on the fifteenth of Adar. But there's a small group of people in Israel who really like Purim a lot and choose to spend the fourteenth of Adar in Tel Aviv and the fifteenth day of Adar in Jerusalem. Just before sun down they jump in their cars and drive up to Jerusalem just in time to hear the reading of the Megillah all over again! In this way, they would be in two time zones in which Purim was being celebrated in one year.

Those people who find Purim to be a questionable holiday, on the other hand, spend the fourteenth day of Adar in Jerusalem and then just before sundown they drive down to Tel Aviv for the fifteenth day of Adar. In that way they're never present in a place where they have an obligation to listen to the reading of Megillat Esther, the book of Esther.

So why would anyone go to such trouble to avoid Purim? The truth is Purim is an odd holiday. While children love this feast of carnivals and costumes, a time when they're allowed to make a racket in synagogue, some people are troubled by its seemingly un-Jewish message. What are we to do with a holiday that celebrates assimilation, encourages public drunkenness, and appears to condone revenge? Despite its light mood, Purim has a dark message. The world is out to get us and if we don't use force to defend ourselves, our enemies will destroy us first.

It all comes to a head in chapter nine of this strange little book called the Megillah, the scroll of Esther. Having saved the Jewish people from annihilation, Mordechai and Esther ask King Ahasveros to renounce the decree that Haman has orchestrated in the king's name for the destruction of the Jewish people. The king tells them that his decree can never be taken back but that he'll do the next best thing. Ahasveros offers to make a new decree giving Jews permission to defend them selves and kill the followers of Haman. Over the next two days, the Megillah tells us, some 75,000 Persians are killed as Jews take up arms and strike their enemies with "with sword, slaughtering, and annihilation!"

This doesn't sound anything like the book that we read in the presence of little children, and yet it's all there: blood, gore and violence. Interestingly, the edition of the Megillah which we use in our synagogue, the one published by the Media Prayer Book Press, contains this portion of the text in the Hebrew, but the editors chose not to translate it. In other words our edition of the Megillah is politically correct. It was censored for those with a faint heart and a sensitive disposition! It tells us that the Jews of Persian defended themselves but it says nothing about revenge.

What we see in the Book of Esther is that the line between self defense and revenge is very, very thin. On the one hand we're told that "the king had permitted the Jews of every single city to organize and defend themselves." And yet in the same breath the same verse goes on to say that they could, "destroy, slay and exterminate every armed force of any people or province that threatened them" - here's the important point - "along with their children and women and to plunder their possessions."

Now wait a second! Where did that come from? They could, "kill the women and children and plunder their possessions?"

To their credit, the Megillah tells us that the Jewish inhabitants of Persia refused to take any booty from their enemies. But this hardly justifies the death of so many people not to mention the women and children. Other than the book of Joshua, the book of Esther is probably the most violent book in the Bible. It's no wonder that there have always been people who were at best ambivalent about the celebration of Purim. "Es past nisht," they said. Jews aren't supposed to act that way….

On a certain level we understand why the Megillah condones such violence. Haman, we're told, is a descendent of Amalek, the evil nation who repeatedly tried to destroy our people. The Torah commands us to blot out the memory of Amalek. Israel's battle against Amalek is of mythic proportions. Generation after generation Amalek rises up in different forms to destroy us. We in turn, must defend ourselves and, even more, we must blot out Amalek so that they will not be a threat to us again.

My colleague Rabbi Jacob Chinitz points out that the line between self defense and vengeance is a thin one in the Book of Esther. When are we defending ourselves, and when are so angry that we are striking out simply to hurt and punish others? I wonder at what point in ancient Shushan the Jewish people recognized that their actions went far beyond self-defense to genocide? This is the problem with violent behavior. Once we open the door, it's not so easy to close it again.

Of course, no where in the Bible are we told that self defense is wrong. The Ten Commandments does not say "You Shall not kill," It says, "You shalt not murder." There are times and circumstances which call for the use of force and violence for the purpose of self defense and even for the purpose of promoting one's national self interests. But we are left wondering how to negotiate that thin line between the permissible use of force and the obscene abuse of violence.

The same is true in our own lives. A child misbehaves. The parent gives the child a swat on the backside so that he won't act that way again. How often, however, is the "pasch in tuches" a warning and how often is it simply an _expression of anger and frustration on the part of the parent. One is for the child's own good; the other is an _expression of anger. One is disciplinary; the other vengeful and abusive. The line between them is very thin.

On the eve of a war in the Middle East, a war which I support, or at least a war about which I believe we have no choice, I have to wonder what's really motivating our nation in these dark and difficult times. 9/11 and the World Trade Center looms heavily in our minds. We feel the need to destroy those nations that condone and promote terrorism, to protect the world "from rouge nations and weapons of mass destruction."Â We want to believe that we are ridding the world of evil through our actions. But where is the line? How much are we motivated by a desire to do the right thing and how much by a need for revenge? Where does justice end and vengeance begin?

Jews have traditionally identified their enemies with Amalek. It was easy to call the inquisitors Amalekites, or Chelmnitzki, or Hitler descendents of evil Amalek. It is much harder to say this in a time when Jews actually have power and the ability to take up arms. To identify one's enemies with Amalek is to declare a war of annihilation against them. Are we prepared to do this? When you are holding a gun in your hand the issues of war and peace, of good and evil should not be too easy to resolve. What scares me today is that our president has a strong sense of conviction and very little ability to sense the grey that is so much a part of the world in which we live. For President Bush there are no questions. For many of us there are too many doubts and questions.

And what frightens me even more is that there is a growing sentiment in the world that somehow we Jews are responsible for the war in which we are about to engage. How easy it is for the world to turn the tables and blame the victims for the sins of the perpetrators. It seems ironic that there are those in our own country who are so ready to blame Israel for a war of which she has consistently been left out.

America is about to walk a thin line. I hope that our leaders have the wisdom to separate between justice and judgment, between right and revenge. In the heat of war I'm not sure it so easy to see these distinctions. As we celebrate Purim we must also remember that it is not enough to condemn evil - we must be willing to do something about it as well. Yet we are left with a question.

How do we walk that thin narrow line? When does justice become revenge? I have no answer to these questions. But if we are truly a moral nation we must be willing to search for an answer.

Shabbat Shalom