I JUST WATCHED a Jewish Humor Central video titled What Tel Aviv University Students (Don't) Know About Purim .
It seemed as if most of the students interviewed were at least Jewish by birth.
TAU - where I briefly worked - is not a place where Judaism is part of the curriculum for all students - unlike Bar Ilan in nearby Rehovot where my daughter studied - but the students' ignorance was both saddening and astonishing.
ISRAELI GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS, - and I very briefly taught at one - teach, or perhaps taught, the students about the holidays both major (Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, and the three "pilgrimage" holidays of Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukot) and minor (Purim, Hanukah).
Either the people interviewed at TAU were raised in an home that was rabidly anti-Jewish or they slept their way through school. Their ignorance is appalling.
I know many Jews in the U.S. and Israel who are less than observant, but THEY KNOW THE PURIM STORY. They may not bother to hear Megelat Esther twice - or even once - but if you ask them who were the lead characters in the Purim spiel they would tell you Esther and Haman, maybe even Mordechai and Ahasuerus. They MIGHT even know that HaShem's name is not mentioned even once in the whole "megelah."
I would not push my luck asking a Jew in Tel Aviv "How many megillot are there?" (I know you know there are five: Esther, Ruth, Song of Songs, Job, Lamentations.)
Most small kids know about dressing up in costumes. No more Esther, Mordechai, and Ahasuerus; now, Wonder Woman, Spiderman, kung fu fighters, an occasional soldier (usually in IDF uniform). For one TAU student, her costume was a bunny, and I don't think she was thinking in terms of a Playboy bunny. (Maybe she planned to lay Easter eggs a la the Cadbury bunny.)
The interviewer on TAU's campus wisely did not ask what Jews DO on Purim, in addition to hearing the megillah. I guess no one sends gifts to their neighbors anymore; no one gives a donation for the needy (a local food bank gets our donation).
One student volunteered that it is a custom to get drunk on Purim; funny how THAT tradition lingers on even when most religious authorities discourage it.
It's not just Israelis-at-TAU who are Purim ignorant. The interviewer asked several people who sounded like Americans (Canadians are Americans, too) about the minor holiday and their answers were no better (or worse) than the Israelis.
The PROBLEM with Purim is that what happened "back then" - 519–465 BCE when Ahasuerus, a/k/a Xerxes I of Persia lived - and today is that Jews still are threatened, albeit now not by Persia (Iran) alone but by Muslim extremists and anti-Semites around the globe.
Then, as now, Jews must be prepared to defend themselves; the European ostrich mentality of "don't make waves" didn't work in Europe and it won't work anywhere today.
Purim is more than just a day to hear the story of Esther; it is more than a day to send food packages to friends and give donations to the needy. Purim is a day when Jews should remember when, across Ahasuerus' 127 provinces, Jews took up arms to defeat the anti-Semites encouraged by Haman
We - Jews - need to defend ourselves from the Hamans of today.
Meanwhile, חג פורים שמח
