Purim costumes have always been about paying homage to the motif of G-d's face being hidden, transforming the decree of genocide against the Jewish people to its nullification in the nick of time; a gesture to the inversion of events in the Megillah, highlighting that things are not what they seem. Hence the masks and masquerades of Purim.
Everyone is confused in shul, hiding and seeking, playfully and mysteriously trying to determine who each persona really is. That spiderman over there, Peter Pan over here, gumball machine or nurse over in the corner, political personality or Megillla character over there, and the masquerading personas go on and on.
As everyone was bouncing around in their Purim costumes this year the obvious irony hit me. The irony of Purim is that sometimes there are no masks. The masks and masquerading are actually people stepping into who they really are. Or wish to be. Once upon a time, I innocently believed it was strictly the wine drinking that revealed everyone's secrets on Purim.
Granted, for the most part, dressing up in costume is really just for the plain and simple fun of it. There is no need to look into it beyond the playful opportunity Purim affords. That's also what I used to think. But not after some costumes I saw this year.
Suffice it to say, I learned new things about people this Purim. And especially when I think of a particular person’s costume from last Purim to this Purim, the contrast says so much about this past year of their life.
Maybe there are parts of ourselves that lie dormant most of the year. Maybe we are too scared to step into certain parts of ourselves in our routine life. We live the tried and true, day to day, familiar life that we are most comfortable with, in our own skin.
But then this one day comes and whispers and says — who are you, really? What do you wish to be? Is there a part of yourself that you miss? A part of yourself you would like to embrace? A part of yourself you would like to identify with?
A strong message within the Megillah story is that of transformation. Of our part in claiming our destiny and being our own envoys, in addition to G-d's constant providence, in shaping the transformations we seek in our lives.
Maybe by donning and cloaking a costume on our physical frame, we connect to a dream or hope or part of ourselves that is not yet actualized, a part of ourselves we would like to know more about.
Be it an inanimate object such as a musical instrument, a superhero, a spiritual persona, or a childhood persona that captures a more innocent and naive time in our life, they all say something about us and who we are.
Whether we get in touch with the side of us that wants to save the world and fight evil, or the part that reaches out to the simplicity of the days gone by, or that wishes to cultivate a talent untapped or unexplored, a repressed goofy side to a serious personality or image, a desire to reach higher spiritual attainments — what is usually written off as those silly Purim costumes might just, after all, be more revealing than concealing.
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