understand or suppress

The emphasis throughout is on the fact that the history of cultural practices cannot be sundered from the history of efforts to reconstruct and understand (or, alternatively, to suppress the memory of) those practices.

- The Rite to Be Reckless: On the Perpetration and Interpretation of Purim Violence by Elliott Horowitz

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The tendency to delegitimize forms of festivity that had previously been acceptable may be seen, for example, among the leaders of the Portuguese-Jewish community of Amsterdam, who decided, two weeks before Purim of 1640, to prohibit hammering in the synagogue during the reading of the Megilla, a custom they considered more appropriate to barbarians than to civilized individuals. The prohibition seems to have had no more than a limited effect, however, for three decades later it was deemed necessary not only to repeat it, but to increase the fine twentyfold (Kaplan 1986: 181).7! As Shakespeare understood: “The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree” (The Merchant of Venice I, 2).

see also Toledot Yeshu & Paul de Lagarde, also

. The Problem with Purim
. Judaism and violence