Purim became the joyous celebration of an epic Jewish victory over anti-Semitism and threatened annihilation – an enactment of the hopes of persecuted Jews throughout the centuries. During the telling of the story, the heroes are cheered and the villain, Haman, is booed and his name is drowned out by the sound of noise-makers or gragers. Purim is a story that became popular to a people in exile. It is part of the long tradition of Jews absorbing parts of their surrounding culture, yet remaining a people apart.
It celebrates the common Jewish dream of the triumph of clever wit over crude brutality. It has a heroine who is very adaptable, but with a hard core of loyalty to her identity as a Jew and to her fellow Jews in a time of trouble. Esther risked her life to assert her right, and the right of her people, to be Jewish in whatever way they chose.
Human initiative is the theme throughout the story and there is no mention at all of the Jewish God. The story also features Esther’s mixed marriage, in the long Jewish tradition of people like Moses and his Cushite wife, who was probably Ethiopian or Sudanese. Esther did not feel that she was compromising her Jewish identity by marrying the Persian king. And she did not fail to assert that identity when the crisis in the story came. Purim can be seen as a celebration of Jewish solidarity in a time of danger, but also as one of reaching out to someone of a different background.