The springtime holidays, Purim and Passover, are linked by four named shabbatot (Sh‘kalim, Zachor, Parah, and haChodesh), each marked with a unique maftir Torah reading and related haftarah which overrules the usual haftarah matched to the weekly parashah. Although all four are considered to serve notice in advance of Passover, Zachor in particular also connects both temporally and thematically with Purim – it is the Shabbat immediately before Purim, and its readings relate to the perpetual battle against Amalek, of which Haman is considered a scion.
Besides the calendar, how are the two holidays connected?
One might suggest that both are oriented toward children, but this is not strictly correct. Passover is an explicitly pedagogical occasion, as commanded repeatedly by the Torah: “You shall tell your child on that day, ‘This is because of what The Lord did for me when I left Egypt.’” for example (Exodus 13:8). The entire purpose of the Seder is to prompt children to ask questions, and its structure supports that both by including many unusual rituals to evoke questioning naturally, and by putting prepared questions into the children’s mouths in the form of the Four Questions. Purim, on the other hand, may be thought of as a children’s holiday through the inherent silliness of the Megillah story, the exaggeration of that silliness in the typical Purim Spiel, the custom of costume dressing, and the fairly modern institution of the Purim Carnival. However, while these silly elements have lent themselves to making the holiday appealing for children, their origin is in the drunken party atmosphere in which the Megillah presents the court of Ahasuerus, and consequently much of its story. Though comedic, the plot and themes of the book and the holiday are quite adult, in every sense of the word.
The two holidays most obviously relate through the theme of Jewish survival. Purim concerns itself with mortal survival, as Haman plans to kill all the Jews; but instead, through the twists of the story, not only Haman and his sons, but indeed many thousands of his would-be accomplices are killed by the Jews in their defensive battles throughout the Persian Empire. (One might note here how some things change while others stay the same – the modern Persian state, Iran, has also seen its efforts to destroy the Jewish state and kill as many Jews as possible through its network of confederates throughout the Middle East result instead in the deaths of many thousands of its own accomplices instead.)
Passover, on the other hand, addresses the threat not of immediate annihilation, but of living without freedom and without meaning. The obvious freedom gained and celebrated on Passover is freedom from slavery, or freedom of agency over one’s body, labor, and lifestyle to put it in positive terms, but there is much more within: freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of worship, freedom of choice, freedom of association, freedom of movement, and much more. Remember that the original “ask” of the Pharaoh is just to allow the Hebrews three days to worship in the wilderness. What these add up to is a freedom to live for the values that we find give meaning to our lives, rather than live (or die) for the benefit of some human ruler.
A few noteworthy differences in the stories and celebrations of these two holidays:
Passover is the first Jewish holiday, born with the Jewish People in the Exodus from Egypt; Purim is the last biblical holiday, born of arguably the last book admitted to the Bible. (Both are born in exile.) Purim, holiday of physical survival, is recorded in a book that never directly mentions God, and is celebrated with wild revelry. Passover, holiday of spiritual survival, is celebrated at home with our families, friends, and most importantly our children; the traditional Haggadah emphasizes God’s ostentatious presence in the story by multiplying the number of miraculous plagues up to 250 but mentioning the name of Moses only once: “[the people] believed in The Lord, and in God’s servant Moses” (Ex. 14:31).
Extrapolating, physical and spiritual survival are both worth celebrating. Physical survival depends on adults doing what adults will do: reproducing, and defending our lives and our children’s when necessary. Spiritual survival, on the other hand, requires the truly miraculous: that we use the freedoms we too often take for granted nowadays to choose to live by values that create meaning in our own lives and in the world, and that we work hard to teach our children to do the same.