There is a unique law in the approach to Purim. “Mishenikhnas Adar marbim besimḥa,” “From the beginning of Adar, we increase in joy.” This is stated in the Talmud (Taanit 29a) and is based on the passage in the Megilla (Esther 9:21–22) in which Mordekhai sends a letter throughout the land instructing all Jews “to observe the fourteenth day of the month of Adar and the fifteenth day, every year – the days on which the Jews obtained rest from their enemies and the month which for them was turned from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday.”

This in turn refers back to the text in which Haman decided on the timing of his decree: “In the first month, the month of Nisan, in the twelfth year of AḤashverosh, they cast pur (lots) before Haman from day to day, and from month to month until the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar” (Esther 3:7).

The difficulties are obvious. Why do we increase our joy for an entire month? The key events were focused on a few days, the thirteenth to the fifteenth, not the whole month.

And why is this a time of simḥa? We can understand why the Jews of the time felt exhilaration. The decree sentencing them to death was rescinded. Their enemies were punished. Haman was hanged on the very gallows that he had prepared for Mordekhai, and Mordekhai himself was raised to greatness.

But is joy the emotion we should feel in perpetuity, remembering those events? The first warrant for genocide against the Jewish people (the second, if one counts Pharaoh’s plan to kill all newborn Jewish males) was frustrated. But is simḥa the appropriate emotion? Surely, what we should feel is relief, not joy. Pesaḥ is the proof. The word “joy” is never mentioned in the Torah in connection with it.

Besides which, the Talmud asks why we do not say Hallel on Purim. It gives several answers. The most powerful is that in Hallel we say, “Servants of the Lord, give praise” – meaning that we are no longer the servants of Pharaoh. But, says the Talmud, even after the deliverance of Purim, Jews were still the servants of AḤashverosh, still living in exile, under his rule (Megilla 14a). Tragedy had been averted but there was no real change in the hazards of life in the Diaspora.

☛ REFLECT Is it possible to command someone to feel the emotion of joy? How do the laws of Purim try to ensure that we experience joy during the festival?

It seems to me therefore that the simḥa we celebrate throughout the month of Adar is different from the normal joy we feel when something good and positive has happened to us or our people. That is expressive joy. The simḥa of Adar, by contrast, is therapeutic joy.

Imagine what it is to be part of a people that had once heard the command issued against them: “To destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jews – young and old, women and children – on a single day” (Esther 3:13). We who live after the Holocaust, who have met survivors, heard their testimony, seen the photographs and documentaries and memorials, know the answer to that question. On Purim, the Final Solution was averted. But it had been pronounced. Ever afterwards, Jews knew their vulnerability. The very existence of Purim in our historical memory is traumatic.

The Jewish response to trauma is counter-intuitive and extraordinary. You defeat fear with joy. You conquer terror with collective celebration. You prepare a festive meal, invite guests, give gifts to friends. While the story is being told, you make an unruly noise as if not only to blot out the memory of Amalek, but to make a joke out of the whole episode. You wear masks. You drink a little too much. You make a Purim spiel.

Precisely because the threat was so serious, you refuse to be serious – and in that refusal you are doing something very serious indeed. You are denying your enemies a victory. You are declaring that you will not be intimidated. As the date of the scheduled destruction approaches, you surround yourself with the single most effective antidote to fear: joy in life itself. As the three-sentence summary of Jewish history puts it: “They tried to destroy us. We survived. Let’s eat.” Humour is the Jewish way of defeating hate. What you can laugh at cannot hold you captive.

I learned this from a Holocaust survivor. Some years ago, I wrote a book called Celebrating Life. It was a cheer-you-up book, and it became a favourite of the Holocaust survivors. One of them, however, told me that a particular passage in the book was incorrect. Commenting on Roberto Benigni’s comedy film about the Holocaust, Life is Beautiful, I had said that though I agreed with his thesis – a sense of humour keeps you sane – that was not enough to keep you alive in Auschwitz.

“On that, you are wrong,” the survivor said, and then told me his story. He had been in Auschwitz, and he soon realised that if he failed to keep his spirits up, he would die. So he made a pact with another young man, that they would both look out, each day, for some occurrence they found amusing. At the end of each day they would tell one another their story and they would laugh together. “That sense of humour saved my life,” he said. I stood corrected. He was right.

☛ REFLECT How can humour save us in the face of those who wish to take away our freedom and destroy us?

That is what we do on Purim. The joy, the merrymaking, the food, the drink, the whole carnival atmosphere, are there to allow us to live with the risks of being a Jew – in the past, and tragically, in the present also – without being terrified, traumatised, or intimidated. It is the most counter-intuitive response to terror, and the most effective. Terrorists aim to terrify. To be a Jew is to refuse to be terrified.

Terror, hatred, and violence are always ultimately self-destructive. Those who use these tactics are always, as was Haman, destroyed by their very will to destruct. And yes, we as Jews must fight anti-Semitism, the demonisation of Israel, and the intimidation of Jewish students on campus. But we must never let ourselves be intimidated – and the Jewish way to avoid this is marbim besimḥa, to increase our joy. A people that can know the full darkness of history and yet rejoice is a people whose spirit no power on earth can ever break.

☛ REFLECT What role do you think joy has played in the survival of the Jewish people throughout Jewish history?