On Saturday night, rabbis at a large Washington, D.C., synagogue plan to dress up as Jewish-inspired Barbies and try to hold two truths at once: that the ancient holiday of Purim is a time for celebration and joy, and that some in their community want no part in that joy.

Not with the Israel-Gaza war raging, with roughly 100 hostages still in captivity in Gaza, and more than 30,000 Palestinians killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

For the clergy at Adas Israel in Northwest Washington, building the festivities around Barbie was a choice, since the holiday’s story is similarly framed around a woman who breaks free from her assumed role. Purim typically calls for dressing up, and the rabbis plan to don costumes of an angelic Barbie of peace, a Barbie sporting Jewish garb, and, yes, even some pink.

But they also know that the celebration during a war will cause discomfort, as the holiday commemorates the Jewish victory over an enemy who called for their total elimination more than 2,000 years ago.

“We’re creating this fantasy, and then reality is going to slap us in the face,” co-senior Rabbi Aaron Alexander said. “Part of being a religious being is to live in that space.”

About six months after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200, and with more than a million Palestinians on the verge of starvation, Jews in the D.C. region and beyond are divided on Israel’s response. They’re wrestling with how to observe this year’s Purim — with some wanting fun because of the darkness of the war, and others calling to wholly rethink the holiday.

In Israel, where many Jewish Americans have family, or visit or know someone directly touched by the war, Tel Aviv has canceled its Purim parade. Jerusalem still plans to hold its celebration, but has faced criticism from families of hostages.

“It’s different than usual because the world is different than usual,” said Corey Helfand, the rabbi at Ohr Kodesh in Chevy Chase, Md., a Conservative synagogue with 500 families.

Purim celebrates a story found in the Book of Esther, when a Persian king is advised by his minister, Haman, to eliminate all the Jews of Persia. The plan is stopped by Queen Esther, who ascended to the crown by marrying the king and hiding her Jewish identity. After revealing that she is Jewish and would be one of those killed in Haman’s plot, Esther persuades the king to stop her people’s destruction. In the last full chapter, the book details Jews killing 75,000 Persians in what some say is self-defense and others see as vengeful retaliation against an enemy after they were saved.

Across the country, some are cooking the favorite recipes of some hostages at the holiday’s festive meal. Others are using the role of the story’s heroine, Esther, as a call for supporting women’s trauma. And still others are imagining more peaceful endings to the holiday’s core text.

In Chevy Chase, Helfand has changed the focus of his weekly biblical studies class over the past few weeks to focus on Purim, which he says grapples with moments of pain similar to what’s happening in Israel, Gaza and rising antisemitism in America. He is also planning group discussions over the holiday based on age and gender to give a space for congregants’ conflicting emotions.

Some observers, like Fran Kritz, 66, are placing symbols of the hostages inside the customary gifts to friends known as mishloach manot. Others, like 40-year-old Aaron Shneyer, are fulfilling the holiday’s obligation to give to the needy by raising money for an organization that donates food in Gaza.

“It’s a deep struggle to imagine celebrating on Purim considering all the suffering in Gaza, both for the Palestinians in Gaza who are experiencing such horrific devastation but also the nightmare that the hostages and their families are still experiencing,” said Shneyer, the musician and service leader at Sixth and I, a restored historic synagogue that holds religious services and cultural events. “But our tradition is very clear that even in difficult times, we have to find joy and celebrate life.”

For many, the Book of Esther’s last full chapter, which details how Jews killed the Persians, has become particularly uncomfortable in light of the war.

Kritz said she plans to quietly slip out of the service when the time comes for that section, worried that remembering that part of the story creates a sense of “vengeance which goes beyond retaliation.”

“Purim this year, for me personally, is tempered by the fact that there are Israeli families who lost family members on October 7 and since then, who have lost soldier family members, have friends and family who are still held captive and have been displaced from their homes,” the Silver Spring resident said. “I also anguish over any noncombatant in Gaza who has suffered and is suffering.”

Alexander said Adas Israel is planning to read the last chapter more quietly this year, in a nod to the discomfort some may feel in hearing it, while having on hand some alternative versions of the text made by a progressive Jewish organization called The Shalom Center.

In the days after Oct. 7, the Shalom Center began planning for how this Purim would be different, said Nate DeGroot, a rabbi and its associate director. It invited 10 Jewish thinkers to contribute to its Chapter 9 Project, which imagines narratives that emphasize nonviolence.

“There are voices that understand the Purim story as a call for more violence,” DeGroot said. “After October 7, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu was already referring to Hamas as Amalek” — the nation that was the enemy of the ancient Israelites, and from which Haman is said to have descended.

“It felt important for us to be telling a different Purim story,” he said.

DeGroot noted that this year is the 30th anniversary of the 1994 Purim massacre in Hebron, when Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli physician born in Brooklyn, attacked and killed 29 Palestinians. Goldstein justified his attack in part by pointing to the Purim story. That gives further urgency to redefining Purim observances, DeGroot said.

Some alternative endings in the Chapter 9 Project include Esther calling for a 36-person task force to mend relationships in the kingdom; for Jews to be merciful, rather than vengeful; and for everyone in Persia to surrender their weapons.

Amichai Lau Lavie, the rabbi of the Lab/Shul, an experimental Jewish community in New York, and Rachel Timoner, senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, wrote in Jewish news outlet The Forward that Jews should change their observance this year, including silencing the boos and noisemakers typically used to drown out Haman’s name during the service.

“Partying as we have in years past is morally problematic, and strategically and politically questionable,” Lau Lavie told The Washington Post. “Our holidays can evolve. This is the year in which some pivot feels to me required.”

Some are focusing on simply being there for each other.

Svivah, an organization devoted to providing spaces for whoever identifies as a Jewish woman, held a Zoom with strangers from across the country this week to discuss how to lean into a joyous holiday that has a heroine at its center. Some Svivah attendees planned to include the names of the women still held in Gaza in their gifts to friends and the needy. Others would dedicate their customary fast in the day leading up to Purim to the women still held captive.

“People are looking for some hope, some path forward,” said Ariele Mortkowitz, Svivah’s founding director. “Judaism doesn’t back away from that.”