Rabbi's Message

Rabbi Elyse Wechterman
Read about the Rabbi
March 2003

Of phantoms, masks and merrymaking

Over vacation week, I got to go to the theater and make a dream come true. I finally got to see The Phantom of the Opera - that much acclaimed Broadway musical during its opening week run at PPAC.

The sets were phenomenal, the music hauntingly beautiful, the pathos of the masked-Phantom, whose face we never really see, palpable. All in all a wonderful production that left many humming their way home.

So it took me by surprise, when the lights came up, to find tears covering my face, absolutely sobbing and unable, for a few minutes to leave the theater because of the depth of sadness and pain that had washed over me.

Many of you know the story - a ghost haunts a theater wreaking havoc on the cast of the latest production and scaring away the lead singer, forcing the young, beautiful understudy to fill the role. The young woman has been the object of the ghost's passion - he has entranced her and taught her to sing. She knows not who the masked ghost is. He is plotting to make her a star - also plotting to make her his alone in the labyrinthine tunnels he inhabits below the theater.

Well there is love, intrigue, more disasters at the theater until eventually, we learn that the ghost is no ghost at all - simply a masked man, horribly deformed at birth, wanting nothing more than the love and companionship denied him all his life as people recoiled from his ugliness. No longer frightened of him, but full of pity, the young woman kisses the Phantom and leaves him alone again to join her handsome young lover in the world above.

It's a story - only a story - but like most good stories, it tells us a truth about ourselves.
For the Phantom lives behind a mask - but all he really wants is someone to see him beyond his mask, underneath and then to love him any way despite the ugliness he knows/fears is there. And isn't that what each of us want as well. We all live behind many different masks - of politeness, of fear, of anxiety, of fashion. And each of us, every single one of us, wants nothing more than to be free of our masks, if only for a moment, recognized for who we are and loved, despite the ugliness we fear lies beneath.

Jews have an opportunity to unmask ourselves and revel in our hidden faces once a year - on the holiday of Purim. We don masks and costumes and celebrate the holiday with drink and sweets, not to cover up, but to let our hair down, be silly, uncover a little more of ourselves in a safe and communal environment. There is ugliness, silliness, pride, arrogance and confusion in the Purim story - the story of Esther and Mordechai, Haman and Acheshverous, all facets that we know exist within ourselves. As we take them out for all to see - in our costumes and behavior - we get to remind ourselves that we really are loved for all that we are -- warts and all.

In the musical, the Phantom is revealed, only to be left again - no wonder why I cried. But for us, in our celebration of Purim, we don masks to let our selves out a little and then spend the night together, laughing, making merry and making it o.k. to be who we really are - even if only one day a year. And we do it together. And that is the difference between the tears at the end of Phantom and the joy we feel during Purim.
Happy Purim to you and your! Be merry - It's Adar!

B'Shalom
Rabbi Elyse