What do Yom Kippur and Purim have in common?
It's not just a Purim riddle; below are some sources to help you learn about the hidden connections between these two holidays.
Yom HaKippurim could be loosely translated as a day that is "like Purim." Not only do the names sound the same (though they don't share the same meaning), but the Midrash says that these are the only two holidays that will be celebrated forever:
...כל המועדים עתידים בטלים, וימי הפורים אינם בטלים לעולם, שנאמר (אסתר ט כח): "וימי הפורים האלה לא יעברו מתוך היהודים". אמר רבי אלעזר: אף יום הכיפורים אינו בטל לעולם, שנאמר (ויקרא טז לד): "והיתה זאת לכם לחוקת עולם לכפר על בני ישראל מכל חטאתם אחת בשנה"...
...All of the holidays are to be nullified in the future but the days of Purim will not be nullified, as it is stated (Esther 9:28), 'And these days of Purim will not be rescinded from the Jews.'" Rabbi Elazar said, "Also Yom Kippur will forever not be nullified, as it is stated, 'And it will be to you for an everlasting statute to atone for the Children of Israel from all of their sins once a year.'"
In other words, the Midrash imagines a time in a future redeemed world when the rest of the holidays will no longer be observed, but each of these holidays has a verse in the Tanakh that indicates that it will last forever.
What connects these two holidays? Here are two ideas:
#1: The Game of Chance
Famously, Purim takes its name from the lots cast by Haman to decide when to exterminate the Jewish people:
Why do you think it is important to know how Haman selected the exact date? Why name the holiday after the lots?
When it comes to Yom Kippur, the role of chance is less well known, but is central in the Torah's account of the day:
This Temple-based "scapegoat" ritual hasn't been practiced in many years, but according to the Torah, the goat to be sacrificed as a sin offering is chosen by drawing lots, and the other goat is sent off "for Azazel," which seems to be a mysterious atonement ritual.
It seems strange to require that lots be cast for this process. Why not just pick different animals for different roles? Why might the element of chance be an important part of the Yom Kippur ritual?
#2: A Second Shot at Torah
Megillat Esther describes the institution of the holiday of Purim as a practice that the Jewish people eagerly accepted upon themselves in recognition of the amazing miracle they had just witnessed.
(27) the Jews undertook and irrevocably obligated themselves and their descendants, and all who might join them, to observe these two days in the manner prescribed and at the proper time each year.
When the rabbis of the Talmud read the end of the Purim story, they see a deeper significance in these words. In their reading, what the Jews "undertook" in this moment was nothing less than observance of all of the laws of the Torah. Here's their version:
אמר רבא...הדור קבלוה בימי אחשורוש דכתיב קימו וקבלו היהודים קיימו מה שקיבלו כבר
Rava said: ...they again accepted it willingly in the time of Ahasuerus, as it is written: “The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them” (Esther 9:27), and he taught: The Jews ordained what they had already taken upon themselves through coercion at Sinai.
The experience of receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai was a terrifying one, and the rabbis argue that it might have felt like a coercive experience for those who were present. Can a person freely choose whether or not to accept a code of law when it is offered amid thunder and lightning and loud noises? Purim, on the other hand, was a time of relief and joy. It was at that moment, say the rabbis, that the Jews experienced a second chance to accept the Torah - this time, freely and gladly.
How might the idea that Purim marks the real acceptance of the Torah change our experience of this holiday?
For a second look at a second chance at Torah, let's talk about Yom Kippur. Famously, tablets containing the ten commandments were given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, who promptly smashed them when confronted with the sight of his people worshipping the Golden Calf. Fast forward a few chapters, and God is ready to forgive the People of Israel and give the Torah again.
According to the Midrash, this second chance at Torah occurred on Yom Kippur.
ירד בי' בתשרי והוא היה יום הכיפורים, ובישרם שנתרצה לפני המקום, שנאמר וסלחת לעוננו ולחטאתנו ונחלתנו (שמות לד ט), לפיכך נתקיים יום חוק וזכרון לדורות, שנאמר והיתה זאת לכם לחקת עולם (ויקרא טז לד)...
He (Moses) came down from the mountain on the 10th of Tishre, which was Yom Kippur, and announced to them that they had found favor before God, as it says "Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your own!” (Exodus 34:9) Therefore it was established as a fixed day and a remembrance for the generations, as it says "This shall be to you a law for all time: to make atonement for the Israelites for all their sins once a year..." (Leviticus 16:34)
This moment of atonement, when a bad decision in the past was left behind and a new path forward made clear, set the precedent for what Yom Kippur is all about.
How might this understanding of Yom Kippur influence our experience of the holiday?
Why might it matter that both Purim and Yom Kippur celebrate a second chance at accepting the Torah?
Think of a time when you had a second chance to make something right. How was it different from the first time? What did you learn in the process?
Yom Kippur is the New Purim
Rabbi Joshua Bolton, One Hundred Suggestions for Seekers & Spiritual Activists
Here’s an irony (is that the right word?) about Purim: Yom Kippur (ke’purim) is the new Purim. In a certain way, Purim really does its thing if you’re kinda living every other day of the year surrounded by a massive superstructure of meaning and if you feel deep down inside a sense that there is a right and a wrong, an up and a down, and that Hashem somehow desires you to be one way and not necessarily another way. Then, on Purim, you get to entertain that kinda darker, maybe suppressed feeling that this whole thing is just a laugh, that we’re just on a giant rock floating through space, that there’s no difference between the Torah and a fart, etc. But having interviewed more or less 2000 Penn millennials (including myself) over the past years, I would describe their assessment of the existential reality thus: We are moved by the poetry of an arc within the moral universe, and we really hope it bends toward justice, but we are just on a giant rock floating through the quiet cosmos and wisdom might as well be a fart considering the unimaginable expanses of time and space, and the only thing that could possibly obligate me is the socio-economics of my family but not the will of Hashem, Creator of the Universe (these are some of my feelings too). In this context of consciousness, Purim cannot necessarily retain its power because its “hidden” insights are just the banal feelings of everyday, and the drunkenness of Purim is outdone by the “blackouts” of Thursday night. In this context, Yom haKippurim (the day that is LIKE Purim) is, strangely, much more like Purim than the rabbis could have imagined. In this context it is within the hours of Yom Kippur where the usual perceptions are permitted to slacken, and in which we give permission to “peer behind the veil” and to briefly consider a suppressed feeling: That farts aside, perhaps we live in the midst of meaning, perhaps there is an arc and that it does indeed bend with intention, with desire, with will. In this context it is not drunkenness that liberates, but a type of unimaginable sobriety through which we come to, finally, read the protagonists as protagonists, and the antagonists as antagonists in a narrative in which we each have a role (usually hard to determine, but always latent and in there somewhere) and that it’s not all vacations and finance and “shit happens” but that Hashem wants something of us, from us, and that we actually do have the capacity to listen deeply and kinda hear Hashem’s “voice” and discern Hashem’s “will” — whatever that means. I say get drunk as hell on Purim. But let’s not deceive ourselves: Yom Kippur is the new Purim.