Peter Beinart’s claims that the festival of Purim somehow demonstrates a Jewish embrace of zealotry and is an example of “the evil that Jews commit”, (11 March) is an insidious attempt to cast Jewish history and identity as heartless and vengeful.
Purim is not a celebration of retribution or slaughter, but of survival against attempted genocide. The Book of Esther repeatedly emphasises that even when the Jews of Persia were finally granted the right to take up arms against those across the empire of its day who sought their destruction, they took no spoils, precisely because they were motivated not by a desire for revenge or the thrill of conquest, but by self-defence.
