Purim Pop-Up Exhibition Features Esther Scrolls, Plays, Music, Murals, and More

The Agam megillah was the most modern piece on display. Another Esther scroll, dated to the second half of the seventeenth century, was the oldest item displayed in the exhibit. Scott Libson, Special Collections Librarian of Yale Divinity Library, showed the visitors that the scroll, which was probably created in Venice, Italy, reflects the confluence of manuscript and print cultures at the time. Written on fine vellum, that is, calf skin, the scroll’s ornamental borders with their endless knot motif are engraved, while the miniature scenes from the Esther Story are illuminated by hand. The scroll was previously in the possession of the Yiddish author Sholem Asch, whose entire collection came to Yale University Library with the help of philanthropist Louis M. Rabinowitz.

The third Esther scroll featured in the exhibit, likewise previously part of the Asch collection, is probably a hundred years younger than the Italian one. Only six inches high and twenty-three inches long, the miniature scroll is illuminated with a plethora of scenes from the Book of Esther. Dov Honig, Postdoctoral Associate in Medieval Jewish History at Yale, showed visitors the inscription at the end of the scroll, which testifies that it was written in Brody (today in Ukraine, then part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria in the Habsburg Empire), a town in which more than half of the population, around 9,000 souls, was Jewish at the end of the eighteenth century. 

The book of Esther was not the only sacred text at the exhibition to feature characters from the Esther story. Islamic world curator Michelle al-Ferzly showed visitors an Indian manuscript of the Qur’an. As she explained, ​the name “Haman” appears six times in the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam. In this text, he is not a minister in the court of King Ahasuerus, but rather, an advisor to the Pharaoh. The 28^th chapter of the Qur’an, surat al-Qaṣaṣ (surah of the Stories), which includes the story of Moses, mentions Haman twice. Haman supports the Pharaoh in rejecting Moses’ call to worship the true God and to set free the children of Israel. Like the Pharaoh, he commands armies aimed at repressing the Israelites.

Projected along the back of the room were images of the wall frescoes from the Dura Europos synagogue as well as historical photos of other materials from the synagogue held in the collections and archives of the Yale University Art Gallery. The ancient town of Dura Europos, located on the west side of the Euphrates River (in modern Syria), sat at the crossroads of Hellenistic, Roman, and Persian cultures and was home to a multi-religious and polyglot population, including Jews. 

On Purim, Jews celebrate by chanting the scroll of Esther, reciting special prayers and liturgical poems, hosting a celebratory feast, exchanging packages of food, and donating monetary gifts to the poor. There are also local practices unique to specific Jewish communities around the world. In Iran, for example, one popular place to visit, especially on and around Purim, is the Tomb of Mordecai and Queen Esther in Hamadan in western Iran. Oren Okhovat, a Postdoctoral Associate in Modern Jewish History at Yale, shared that “Growing up, my father often spoke of visiting the tomb in Hamadan with his parents during Purim.” It was therefore especially moving for him to show visitors a manuscript diagram of the tomb. The diagram represents multiple unique stories. At first look, it appears simply as a kabbalistic rendering of the tombs of Mordecai and Esther from the Purim story. A comparison with images and video of the contemporary site reveals a meticulous blueprint, documenting everything from the placement of the two arks to the specific inscriptions on the walls and each entryway. Visitors to the exhibition were able to see the manuscript alongside a contemporary TikTok video of the site.

The physical artifact tells its own story of survival. Produced in vellum, the deep creases suggest it was once folded small enough to be hidden in a pocket or carried as a personal talisman. Although its exact origins remain a mystery, pencil-marked “ruling lines” used by the scribe indicate that it is likely a nineteenth-century creation. Given the mass exodus of the Iranian Jewish community following the 1979 Revolution, it is easy to imagine this manuscript traveling in the pocket of a Hamedani Jew, preserved through the diaspora until it reached the Beinecke about a decade ago. “For the Persian Jewish diaspora, this manuscript diagram is deeply meaningful because it represents a deliberate attempt by Hamadani Jews to carry an integral piece of their local heritage—a physical representation of their Purim celebration—with them into exile,” Okhovat reflected.

As Hadas Bram, a doctoral student in the Music Department, explained to visitors, Shimon Hakham modestly refers to himself in the preface to this edition as a mokher sefarim (a “bookseller”). He notes that this was the first printed edition of Targum Sheni in the community’s vernacular language. He emphasizes the importance of the Targum Sheni in connection with a local custom to read it annually in the synagogue on Shabbat Shekalim, the Sabbath preceding the month of Adar. Shabbat Shekalim is considered a particularly auspicious Sabbath: on this day, two Torah scrolls are removed from the ark, one for the weekly parashah and the other for Parashat Shekalim. According to Shimon Hakham’s preface, until the publication of this volume, the Parsi rendering of the Targum Sheni had only circulated orally. Community religious leaders would interpret and translate the Aramaic text extemporaneously as it was read in the synagogue.

Although the book was printed in Jerusalem, it was brought back to Bukhara. This specific copy is a testimony to the circulation of people between Jerusalem and Bukhara: it was owned during the Soviet period by a Bukharian Jew whose name appears on an ex libris stamp in both Hebrew and Cyrillic letters on the title page verso. It thus testifies to the continuous intellectual, cultural, and spiritual exchange maintained between the Bukharian neighborhood in Jerusalem and the community in Bukhara and its environs from the late nineteenth century through the late twentieth century, prior to the mass migration of most Bukharian Jews to Israel.

Bram also showed visitors another book, this one from Yemen, which preserves a relatively literal Judeo-Arabic translation of the Book of Esther. While it occasionally paraphrases, the translation generally remains close to the Hebrew original, while contextualizing certain words, phrases, and concepts within the local Arabic-speaking milieu. “What is particularly interesting about this book,” Bram reflected, “is the evidence that the community read the Book of Esther in Judeo-Arabic within a ritual setting, most likely in the synagogue during the celebration of Purim.” She pointed to the heavy wear, visible finger marks, and physical deterioration of the pages, which strongly suggest that the volume was actively handled, perhaps in ritual context, rather than preserved primarily for reference or only for study.

Further evidence of its performative function appears in the variation of type and size of the script. Bram noted that these shifts seem to correspond to specific, heightened sonic-performative moments in the public reading of the Megillah. A prominent example is the passage listing the names of the sons of Haman. In many Jewish liturgical traditions, this section is marked by a distinctive performative gesture, such as reciting the names in a single breath or accompanying them with noise. In this manuscript, the names are written in a significantly enlarged, square script, functioning as a visual cue that signals and instructs this ritualized sonic shift.

The exhibit also featured a partial translation of the Targum Sheni (“The Second Aramaic Translation”) of the Book of Esther. As Konstanze Kunst, the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Librarian for Jewish Studies at Yale University Library, explained, despite its name, Targum Sheni is much more than a translation: it is a form of exegetical storytelling originally created for Aramaic-speaking Jews, likely in the seventh century. More than a thousand years later, the Jewish scholar David Ottensoser considered the text both “very entertaining” and conducive to the “ennoblement of the heart.“ To make it accessible to his audience, Ottensoser translated part of it into High German, the language that educated German Jews increasingly used at the time, but rendered it in Hebrew characters, which were still more familiar to many, because of the Jewish religious education that they received. Ottensoser directed the text “primarily to women,” but we can assume it was read by people of all genders. He had it printed in the small Bavarian town of Sulzbach in 1820.

Konstanze also showed visitors a rare 1924 pamphlet containing Old Songs for Purim in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish). The booklet was printed in Jerusalem by Shmuel ha-Levi Zuckerman, a Polish Jew who led a print shop in Jerusalem from 1883 to 1929. He printed items for all Jews in Jerusalem in Hebrew, Yiddish, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Spanish, and other languages. The pamphlet’s back depicts bottles of alcohol, evoking a passage in the Babylonian Talmud that notes that on the holiday one ought to get so drunk “that one doesn’t know the difference between Mordecai and Haman.” The pamphlet thus emphasizes the merriment connected to Purim and the famous rabbinic saying: “When the month of Adar begins, let joy increase.” 

This volume does not explicitly state whether it was intended for the Sephardic or Ashkenazic community, but the liturgy for Ta‘anit Esther offers a clue. Queen Esther was the ultimate “foundation myth” for the Spanish and Portuguese congregations in Amsterdam and Hamburg. To this community of former conversos, Esther’s need to hide her identity within the Persian court mirrored their own lives under the ever-watchful eye of the Inquisition. 

The Shiviti plaque was not the only item on display crafted by a non-expert. One of the most surprising books in the exhibition was a personal notebook from early modern Italy. In the seventeenth-century, when the walls of the Italian ghettos had already been built and Jewish segregation had become an established part of the urban landscape, a young Jewish girl from Mantua—Badsabea Coen di Mantova—devoted time to meticulously inscribing her notebook with beautiful Hebrew and Italian writing in ink. In her personal book, probably dating to 1615, she gathers texts related to the spring holidays of the Jewish calendar. In the pages of her notebook, prayer takes on the form of a living voice: songs, verses, dialogues, and personal musings move between Hebrew and vernacular Italian, as if to preserve—or to herald—a hope of renewal. 

Stefania Baitella, a doctoral student at Sapienza University in Rome who is currently a Visiting Research Assistant in the History Department at Yale, read the contents of the notebooks to interested visitors. The manuscript begins with an extended text about the Jewish commandments. 

The largest item at the exhibit was an unfolded Yiddish “newspaper” created in Los Angeles in 1927. Specifically made for Purim, the faux newspaper is called Der Grager, after the noisemaking device, usually a ratchet, with which Jews drown out the name of Haman during the reading of the Esther scroll. 

As Emily Mazza, a doctoral student in the History Department who works with Yiddish sources, explained, it contains obviously invented, humorous national, local, and international news as well as tongue-in-cheek classified ads. Yale Library likely owns the only surviving copy in the world. Humorous publications for Purim like this, professionally printed or handcrafted by private persons, have a long tradition, but only a fraction of them were preserved in libraries.

Der Grager “reports” from Moscow, Russia: “At the last meeting, the Jewish section [of the Communist Party] heatedly discussed the Purim question: Comrade Roshkes defended the Esther scroll and the festival of Purim, stating that Purim is a revolutionary festival, the Esther scroll a revolutionary document … and the Hamantaschen [filled pastries eaten during Purim] food for the hard-toiling masses.

Comrade Esther rebutted this and explained that she, better than anyone else, can state with certainty that the scroll of Esther is no more than [a story about] intrigues from an imperial court and as such harmful to the communist youth. The Hamantaschen she did not oppose, however, as long as they would be filled … with red poppy seeds.”

The Jewish section sided with Esther. As a result, the local cooperative baked red Hamantaschen, Rabbi Tschitnik will read the Communist Manifesto instead of the scroll of Esther, and the comrades will profit [lit. beat the capital] with zeal.”

Emily also showed visitors another Yiddish Purim publication directed to a broad audience: a Purim folk operetta in three acts with text and music for voice and piano, published in 1916 in New York. It was then offered for 25 cents, which would be around $8 today. The libretto was written by Shmuel Hurvits under the pseudonym A. Litvin. Hurvits was born in 1863 in Minsk and died in 1943 on Coney Island. From 1903 onward, he lived between New York, Warsaw, and Vilnius. He was close to the Jewish socialist movement, especially Labor Zionism. As a journalist, cultural historian, collector of Jewish folklore, and much more, he was a prolific writer in Yiddish and occasionally Hebrew.

The Purim folk operetta is rooted in Hurvits’s folklorist interests. The tradition of Purim plays goes back to at least the fifteenth century, starting with humoristic monologues which evolved into complex dramas by the eighteenth century. By then some plays started to have orchestral accompaniment. Some Purim plays were also created as pageants for children and youth. This is also the case with the Purim Operetta by Hurvits, who wrote in its introduction: “This Purim play can be easily learned by older children who speak Yiddish well. Some words which are hard for the children to understand can be switched with easier and more popular terms. But such terms … which are typical for the Purim play should not be changed.”

Hurvits could have had no better composer for this operetta than Michl Gelbart (1889–1962), a Polish Jewish cantor, composer, music critic, and poet who lived in the US since 1912. During his life Gelbart composed six children’s operettas. The striking Art Nouveau cover art of Hurvits and Gelbart’s Purim operetta publication was created by the famous Galician Jewish artist and cultural Zionist Ephraim Moses Lilien (1874–1925). The design first appeared in Morris Rosenfeld’s Lieder des Ghetto (Songs of the Ghetto), published in Berlin in 1902. In the 1916 Purim operetta publication, Lilien is not credited as the artist, but he was already so famous that everyone likely would have recognized his work.

Jews personalized the holiday of Purim in all sorts of ways: creating colorful wall plaques, copying Purim texts into personal notebooks, and even writing their own scrolls of miracles that they experienced and that they wanted to record. One of the four scrolls on display was just such a text - not a scroll of Esther but of someone’s personal redemption. 

“Our pop-ups are among my most favorite events of each semester,” said Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies. “It is moving to witness our graduate students and postdoctoral fellows working with our librarians and faculty members as they learn about each object and brainstorm how best to present it to the public. In our review sessions, each member shares their own areas of expertise with their colleagues. Together, we decipher tricky handwriting, translate passages in a range of rare languages, note unique features such as marginalia and colophons, admire artistic flourishes, and consider the story of each item - who created it, who might have used it, and how it ended up in the Yale collection. Then, during the pop-up, we have the opportunity to share Yale’s amazing Judaica collection with a diverse crowd from across the university and the broader community. It doesn’t get much better than this.”