Local Purim Festivals
Purim Sheni (Second Purim) are local festivals usually decided by community rabbis, to celebrate deliverance from an impending danger thanks to divine intervention.
The festivals refer to the Book of Esther where prayers and the Queen’s intervention avert the risk of a massacre. Threat of destruction can ensue from a cruel edict, but also from adverse climate events such as earthquakes, tidal waves and fires as happened in the Leghorn, Ancona or Alessandria and recalled in local Purim.
They could also be established because of political upheavals such as revolutions and wars when houses and synagogues were hit by cannon fire or explosive devices that miraculously did not cause any victims, as happened in Rome, Cuneo, Padua and Pitigliano.
There are also Family Purim festivals for communities or families when a small number of people survive events such as a building collapsing or, small fires as happened in Ferrara. The stories of such events are passed down to posterity, from generation to generation and told in special megillot, rolled parchments, with prayers and hymns.
