Purim: The Seeds of a Jewish Circus

At a hoop-dance class in Tel Aviv

Circus arts education has great potential to engage with and reinforce a deeper and more playful sense of Jewish identity. Purim is a holiday that expresses the carnivalesque in Judaism through costume, mask and clowning, and lends itself naturally to circus performances. But circus imagery appears in many other texts and traditions within Judaism: descriptions of the Levite's musical performance during the Temple service, the Talmud's depiction of Beit haShoevah, and the appearance
of the "sacred clown" or "trickster" from the Biblical character of Jacob to the modern day badchanim of the Hasidic world. A Jewish circus troupe would be in high demand on Sukkot, Lag b'Omer and Tu b'Av.

The Purimspeil
At the center of this celebration is the essentially Jewish storytelling mode of the purimspeil, a performance that is often a playful and subversive interpretation of a Biblical story (typically, but not exclusively, the book of Esther), and into which circus arts can easily be incorporated. In my experience coordinating and performing in the circus act for Workmen’s Circle’s “Gragger” party, for instance, the circus performers decided to use their hoops to create a wall around the other circus performers and portray the oppression of the Jewish people within the walls of the city of Shushan.

Topsy Turvy

The carnivalesque elements of the festival of Purim come from the ideas of hiddenness: haster astir panai – “and I will surely hide My face from you on that day…” (Deuteronomy 31:18), and of topsy-turvyness: v'nahafuch hu “And it was turned about” (Megillat Esther 9:1). In reflecting on the realities of Jewish history, most people acknowledge that the story of Esther is an entirely imaginative work, a brilliant piece of creative writing in which the Jewish people envision an end to victimhood. In this story, the act of imagination is a powerful and effective one, and the only way the Jewish people are able to create an ideal world in which they have authority – in response to the realities of the time in which they were subject to oppression, injustice and a sense of constant powerlessness. In playing with this quality of the story of Esther in the purimspiel, actors create a commentary – or modern midrash.

Masquerading
The idea of haster astir panai explicitly lends itself to the tradition that continues to this day, of wearing masks and trying on other identities on Purim. Looking at the history of Purim celebration, the custom of masquerading has a significant history as it was first introduced among the Italian Jews about the close of the fifteenth century under the influence of the Roman carnival. From Italy this custom spread over all countries where Jews lived. Examining God’s hiddenness in the Book of Esther, we don’t only gain human freedom when God wears a mask (which gives God the freedom to act in new ways) – but also when we imitate God in this act, by wearing masks that allow us to act in new ways, and step out of conventional roles.

Adam Lavitt is entering his final year of rabbinical studies at Hebrew College, where he is also pursuing a Master's in Jewish Education and a certificate in Pastoral Counseling.  His main interest lies in building community through experiential, embodied, Jewish education, and takes improvisational dance, farming and circus arts as some of his inspirations in designing meaningful Jewish experiences.  His goal is to find a way to facilitate Jewish learning and practice that brings our minds back into our bodies, and into meaningful relationship with the earth.