Everyday Jews – upcoming book by Keith Kahn-Harris

In this blog, Keith Kahn-Harris, a Senior Lecturer at Leo Baeck College, reflects on his relationship with Purim and talks about his upcoming book – Everyday Jews: Why The Jewish People Are Not Who you Think They Are… 

I grew up hating Purim. 

I’ve never liked dressing up, but once a year I was compelled to do so. I’d then be ferried to shul to a party that never felt particularly festive. There’d be Hamantashen and the poppyseeds would get everywhere. The megillah reading was either tedious or (when we drowned out Haman’s name) much too loud. And to top it all off there would lame children’s songs to pretend to sing. 

I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, but perhaps, at my childhood Reform Jewish Purim celebrations, I was picking up on a surreptitious ambivalence about the festival. Progressive Judaism have often found Purim difficult or impossible to include in the festival calendar: A highly particularistic festival, it clashes with the universalism that has often dominated the progressive world; a festival that is traditionally raucously observed, it clashes with the progressive emphasis on decorum in shul; a festival that is centred on irreconcilable conflict between Jews and non-Jews, it undercuts progressive assertions of full belonging in Diaspora societies.  

Not to mention that the Book of Esther has no historical validity. 

So how do you solve a problem like Purim? Making it the kind of childish festival that I experienced as a child is one way of neutering it. Certainly the Reform Jews I grew up with did not want to treat Purim as the drunken bacchanal it can be in other denominations. In fact, when our rabbi did get drunk one Purim, it did not go down well with my synagogue’s congregation.  

By the time I reached adulthood, I tended to avoid Purim wherever possible. In recent years though, I have come to develop a sneaky affection for the festival. Part of the reason for this is that progressive Judaisms have become a little more relaxed about it. We are less invested in decorum and fitting in to wider society. Purim is less of a ‘problem’ than it once was.  

I’ve also begun to be more generous about the discomfort that led to progressive Jews treating Purim like a children’s festival. For one thing, the irony is delectable. In the book of Esther, we have a story that’s full of violence and sexual exploitation. On the other hand we have ‘Chag Purim, chag Purim, chag gadol l’yehudim…’ and costumes made of cardboard. 

Such ironies and contradictions aren’t anything to be ashamed of. In fact, I think we should celebrate them. And on 11 March 2025 I will be doing so in the runup to Purim. At this event at JW3, I will be hosting a celebration of the endearingly crap aspects of Jewish life. For example, we will celebrating the irony of Jews celebrating the holiest day of the week with the worst wine imaginable – Palwin.  

The JW3 event will tie into the March publication of my book Everyday Jews: Why the Jewish people are not who you think they are. In the book I argue that the public, highly visible and controversial status of the Jews in the cotemporary world (which has been exacerbated in the wake of October 7th), means that we do not treasure the mundane aspects of Jewish life as we should. I suggest that we should develop an affection for the incompetent, mediocre and contradictory aspects of Jewish life.     

The affection for the not-particularly-good aspects of Jewish life that I have been cultivating in the last few years, has also helped me to reconcile myself with Purim. While I still hate dressing up and I rarely get drunk, a focus on everyday life can be an unexpected way of entering into the carnivalesque spirit of the festival. Drawing attention to the banality of everyday life cuts our human pretensions down to size. 

I wish it could be Purim everyday… 

Keith Kahn-Harris is a Senior Lecturer at Leo Baeck College. His book Everyday Jews comes out on 13 March and the launch event at JW3 is on 11  March.