| Abstrakt: |
In our study, we focus on the post-Holocaust Purim performances in Hungary. In those communities, where there were enough surviving children, they performed purim spiels - funny scenes and plays. The programs and the staging of the plays reveal various communal interpretations of the survivors concerning the recent traumatic past and present involving such urgently pressing issues as reintegration, dissimilation, emphasis on religious tradition, and both leftist and religious versions of Zionism. Embedded in the Jewish tradition, yet directly reacting to contemporary events, the performances reflected on the persecutions and the postwar social processes as they had been experienced by the members of individual Jewish communities. The rewritings/reinterpretations of Purim's origin story, the Book of Esther, themathized sensitive social issues, such as the punishment of war criminals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
