Chapter 24: Mask, Costume, True Self (Purim Episode)
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Chapter 24: Mask, Costume, True Self (Purim Episode)
We’re publishing this episode out of sequence to link up with Purim, the festival of costumes and the story of Esther! On “The Good Place”, the humans and Janet put on costumes and assume new identities to pass through demon headquarters on their way to the Judge. On the podcast, Ilana Schachter (rabbi), Daniella Risman (hazzan=cantor), and Jon Spira-Savett talk about how costumes relate to, obscure, or help bring out our true selves, and how from the Bible to “The Good Place” 45-year-old men create impossible messes and tell women only they can fix it.
Texts
(Go to Jewish Lexicon on this site for more on Jewish terminology, names of texts and other background. The links here in the citations take you to the specific quotes in their full source contexts.)
Esther — the biblical book also known as “The Megillah”
Some key verses:
(2:10)
Esther did not tell her nation or her place of origin, for Mordechai had commanded her that she not tell.
(4:10-17)
Esther said to Hathach to command Mordechai: “All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any person, man or woman, comes before the king’s presence in the inner court without having been called, there is but one law for him—to be put to death. Only the one to whom the king extends the golden scepter shall live, and I, I have not been called to come to the king for the last thirty days.”
They told Mordechai the words of Esther, and Mordechai said to reply to Esther: “Do not imagine in your soul that you of all the Jews can escape into the house of the king. For if you are silent, yes silent in this time, relief and rescue will stand up for the Jews from another place, and you and the house of your father will disappear. And who knows if for a time like this you have arrived at a royalty?”
Esther said to reply to Mordechai: “Go, gather all the Jews found in Shushan, and fast for me, and do not eat and do not drink three days, night and day; also I and my servant-maidens will fast thus. And with that I will go to the king against the law, and if I perish, I perish.”
And Mordechai went around and did according to all that Esther had commanded him.
Deeper Dives
We passed quickly through the idea that the Yom Kippur is known in the Torah as Yom Kippurim (the day of “cleansing/atonement”, and there is a kind of pun in later Jewish thought that kippurim=k’Purim, so Yom Kippurim=Yom K’Purim, “the day that’s like Purim”! Which is a twist, since the two seem at first glance to be so opposite. Yet the two are connected as “costume holy days” when we do not wear our regular clothing. On Yom Kippur, the custom is for all to dress in white, and on Purim we put on fun costumes. For more on this theme: a teaching from Jon on a Yom Kippur: Costumes, Whites, “Who Knows”
More on masks and costumes from a Jewish angle:
Jon again: “Getting Out of Our Masks”
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat (The Velvetten Rabbi), “Stop Hiding, Let Yourself Go Free”
Dr. Michal Guvrin, “Seriously Lauging to Death: Couples’ Games and Masks in the Book of Esther”