If you celebrate Purim, why?

Why not? It’s a holiday established by Jewish law, and even if it tells a mythical story, the lessons and implications still remain valid. I’m also not sure Jacob really wrestled with an angel, and I still make sure not to eat the sciatic nerve.

What kind of logic is that? Like, you accept the law but not its reason—so what reason do you have for holding on to it?!

Why doesn’t the witness argument work for Purim too?

I wrote something simple. The same reason as someone who thinks it really did happen. Why establish a holiday over something that did happen? To draw some insights from it or express certain ideas. That can also be done even if it didn’t actually happen.
Maimonides writes about the angels visiting Abraham that it happened in a dream. It is very likely that according to his view, Jacob’s encounter with the angel was also in a dream. So according to him, is one allowed to eat the sciatic nerve?

As for the witness argument, there are several reasons. First, the witness argument is added to other considerations, and everything works together. The witness argument by itself is not all that strong. Second, the witness argument works when the tradition says that this is indeed what happened. But with Purim there is no particular emphasis that this really happened. A story is told and a holiday is celebrated. Usually people assume that this is how it was, but there is no emphasis on that in the tradition, especially because it isn’t important. By contrast, regarding the revelation at Sinai, the tradition insists that this is what happened (“For ask now of the former days…”); and there too it is very important that it actually happened.

And finally, it is certainly plausible that it happened, without being committed to all the details. But what I wrote is that there is no necessity and no certainty here, and it also isn’t important. So if the questioner has doubts, let him remain in doubt.

[Maimonides there really does say that Jacob’s encounter with the angel was also in a prophetic vision. And Nachmanides wondered: then why was he limping on his thigh once awake? And Ritva strained to explain that the powerful imagination left an impression on his body. And perhaps according to Maimonides the limping too was in the dream.]

Thanks.
Where are Maimonides and Nachmanides etc.? (Sounds very interesting.)

Nachmanides on Genesis chapter 18 (and there he brings Maimonides), and Ritva there in Sefer HaZikaron.

This actually does seem to refer to a real story:

“The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves to them, so that it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to what was written, and according to their appointed time, every year. And these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and these days of Purim should not fail from among the Jews, nor should their remembrance perish from their seed.”

“Therefore the rural Jews, who live in the unwalled towns, make the fourteenth day of the month of Adar a day of gladness and feasting and a holiday, and of sending portions one to another. And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, to establish for them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month of Adar, and the fifteenth day of it, every year, according to the days on which the Jews had rest from their enemies, and the month that was turned for them from sorrow to gladness and from mourning to a holiday; to make them days of feasting and gladness, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor. And the Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai had written to them.”

“On which the Jews had rest…”

I watched the video you sent.

Really beautiful,
that Meor Ovadia really is an honest, talented, and sincere person…