6 February 28 • 2019
jn
A
ll winter, Detroit
Jews for Justice
leaders have
been busily planning
the DJJ’
s 4th Annual
Purim Extravaganza.
While doing so, people
have asked, “What’
s jus-
tice-y about Purim?”
Purim celebrates the story of how
a Jewish woman named Esther saves
the Jews of Persia from a genocidal
plot proposed by the wicked vizier
Haman (boo!) and approved by
the bumbling King Achashverosh.
The leader of the Jews at that time
was a Shushanite resident named
Mordechai. He had a cousin, Esther,
who was orphaned as a young girl.
Mordechai raised her and treated her
as a daughter.
This story, which is fundamentally
a story of the triumph of oppressed
people over the machinations of a
hateful and/or apathetic state appara-
tus, has been told and retold through
the centuries in ways that invoke and
parody the struggles of the day.
This year, DJJ is doing its annual
Purim shpiel (play). There is a sense
of collective catharsis, cohesion and
power that comes from putting down
the opposition and dramatizing the
ascent of the “good
guys.” Through our
revelry, we cultivate
resilience and enact the
triumph that we so long
for.
But the Purim story
does not end with
the simple foiling of
Haman’
s genocidal plot. Rather than
Mordechai being hanged on the gal-
lows, it is Haman and his sons who
hang. “V’
nahafokh hu.” We flip it on
them and redirect the threat of anni-
hilation from us onto them.
For a suffering people living
subsumed under the shadow of an
empire, such a revenge fantasy is
understandable. But is this the best
we can do? Rather than sanitizing
this narrative or relishing its violent
conclusion, why not take the fantasy
of Purim as an invitation to envision
an ever more holistic, totalizing and
sustainable liberation for our people
and beyond?
The mitzvot (commandments) of
Purim teach us to enact — at least for
a day! — a radical alternative to the
systems that guide our daily living.
We are taught to practice expansive
joy; to engage in gift-giving and
mutual aid within our communities;
to give tzedakah, direct reparations
for economic injustice.
We wear costumes and dress in
ways that reveal who we could be
— and in some ways really are! And
there is, of course, the teaching from
the rabbis that tells us that we should
drink to the point being unable to
differentiate between the phrases
Arur Haman (“Cursed be Haman”)
and Baruch Mordechai (“Blessed be
Mordechai”) — not to erase the dis-
tinctions between harmfulness and
caring, but to remind us that even
our most treasured truisms deserve to
be interrogated and unpacked.
Purim is a day when we are taught
to remember that another world is
possible: a day to reflect on the world
as it has been and to manifest the way
we want things to be in the future. ■
RSVP for the DJJ Purim Extravaganza at
detroitjewsforjustice.org/purim2019.
Roslyn Abt Schindler is associate professor
emerita at Wayne State University, an active
member of Congregation T’
chiyah and a
Detroit Jews for Justice leader since its
inception. Jake Ehrlich is a graduate of the
Jewish Communal Leadership Program at
the University of Michigan School of Social
Work. His is an active leader in DJJ and
Congregation Tchiyah’
s community engage-
ment associate.
commentary
Purim Off
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Roz Schindler & Jake Ehrlich
symbolic; it also means: double “chai.
” To
all of them, whether celebrated or not,
Kol HaKavod. You are the pride and joy
of our Jewish community.
— Rachel Kapen
West Bloomfield
A Remembrance
of Abraham Weberman
On Jan. 25, 2019, Holocaust survivor
Abraham Weberman passed away.
Weberman was the president of the
Shaarit Haplaytah, the survivor organiza-
tion of Metropolitan Detroit. He was one
of the pioneering Holocaust survivors
of the Shaarit Haplaytah whose dream
it was to build a Holocaust Memorial
Center. The Shaarit Haplaytah helped
survivors get to know one another as
they built a community for the new
survivors coming to Detroit after the
war. They held dinner dances, had card
games, raised money to buy ambulances
for the new State of Israel and raised
money to build a memorial to remember
the Holocaust. This later would become
the Holocaust Memorial Center.
Weberman was a survivor of the
infamous Lodz Ghetto. After the war,
he went to a displaced persons camp in
Frankfurt where he met his first wife,
Lotka. In 1947, he came to Israel, then
known as Palestine. He fought in the
Hagganah and later served in the Israel
Defense Forces. He moved to Detroit
to join his brother Leon who was living
here. Abraham Weberman’
s biography
can be read at portraitsofhonor.org.
Weberman was a good man who had
a heart of gold. He will be sorely missed
by our community.
— Dr. Charles Silow
West Bloomfield
continued from page 5