The Metaphorager.

Why Is Purim Like Yom Kippur?

2011.03.16

“Yom Kippur brings the joy of teshuvah; Purim the teshuvah of joy.”

(TO UNDERSTAND THIS, YOU NEED to know that this was my response to Rabbi David Wolpe‘s Facebook post this morning. “Every Jewish holiday has its partner,” he said, and asked what ties together Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and Purim, which begins Saturday night and celebrates a thwarted plot to kill the Jews of Persia.

(R’ Wolpe’s favorite equivalence is from R’ Jack Riemer: “On Purim we put masks on; on YK we take them off.” Purim, in other words, is about the teshuvah (repentance, or transcendence) of illusion. But Jews have been pondering this relationship for centuries. Purim is a very boisterous holiday where people dress up in outlandish costumes and drink until the lines blur between friend and enemy. Yom Kippur is a solemn accounting of mistakes and deliberate errors.

(My favorite Chasidic view of all this is that “Yom Kippurim” (which some interpret “Day Like Purim”), as a day of teshuvah through forgiveness, is even happier than Purim: “How not, when all our sins are forgiven?” So my answer: that as intense teshuvah brings joy, intense joy brings teshuvah.

(But you knew that, right? Happy Purim/Chag Purim Sameach!)

Crit, Etc

Aristotle’s Pernicious Hand

2011.03.15

PEOPLE OF EARTH, HEAR ME: There are more than two ways out of this moment.

(Say it with me: “There are more than two ways out of this moment.”)

Some would have you believe that you can only go this way or that way. In fact, you may also go more ways than you can think. “You’re not going this way” doesn’t imply or mandate “you’re going that way.” As if that way were the only other way to go! Aside from this way, of course.

Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy!

2011.03.15

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN you mount a high-definition camera on a spaceship and send it to Saturn:

(More information at http://www.outsideinthemovie.com/. For maximum fun, expand the view by clicking on the arrow-square in the bottom right corner.)

Writing

Poker Face

2011.03.14

WE WERE FIVE MEN PLAYING draw poker.

“Ante up, gentlemen,” said R. “Nickel apiece.”

The cards went round once, twice, thrice.

B coughed. T took a sip of his Cuba Libre.

R sent the cards round again. And again.

When Tefilin Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Lay Tefilin

2011.03.14

Fig. 1.

March 14, 2011 (JTA) — An Alaska Airlines flight crew issued a security alert after three Mexican Orthodox Jews began praying with tefillin.

The flight attendants, who were concerned by the prayers being said aloud in Hebrew and the unfamiliar boxes with leather straps hanging from them, locked down the cockpit and radioed a security alert ahead to Los Angeles International Airport. (See: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/03/14/3086391/alaska-airlines-detains-passengers-over-tefillin.)

(This sort of thing Nearly Happened To Me, in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport in early 2002: the onlookers were a couple of antsy early-morning passengers watching me “wrap up” in a terminal alcove. “It’s a Jewish prayer thing,” I said, and left it at that. They were mollified, I met my obligations, and the world survived another day.)

Crit