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On Purim, I’m Re-reading June Jordan
Ms. June Jordan begins by throwing her hands up: I didn’t know and nobody told me and what / could I do or say, anyway? And she ends with the title of her poem, ‘Apologies to All the People in Lebanon’: I’m sorry. / I really am sorry. In between is the apology itself, details of the 1982 Lebanon war. She repeats the word ‘you’ and ‘your’ 22 times, speaking directly to expelled Palestinians. So too, does she speak directly to her Americanness, implicated in the war.
Today, quarantined American Jews celebrate the holiday of Purim, a kind of Jewish carnival that marks the moment in ancient times when we, a People, escaped death. Purim festivities tell how Haman, the king’s advisor, had planned to kill all of the Jews in Persia, and how Queen Esther, who had risen to her position by hiding her Jewishness, revealed herself as a Jew to convince the king to save her kin. We’re supposed to drink ourselves into sloppiness and eat cookies that resemble the hat worn by Haman. It is the happiest holiday in Judaism. An edict to remember our aliveness. An invitation to revel in the joy of being drunk and full, and that we can be drunk and full.
Jewish holidays, which mostly tell stories of our escape, wandering and eventual freedom, are opportunities for reflection, though I do not see many of my siblings, comrades and colleagues in Jewishness asking where the threat…
