I'm not sure if Purim is The Best Holiday but I gotta say that Purim 2020 when my entire congregation had to quarantine due to a COVID outbreak at the megillah reading, about a week earlier than the rest of the country shutting down, that was probably the worst any holiday has ever been made.
My favorite Holy Day is certainly Yom Kippur. This year during Yom Kippur I noticed that the very last page in our machzor, to be sung after 25 hours of fasting, after the ecstatic havdalah, after the relief of kiddush, the machzor had put HaTikvah, the Israeli National Anthem. It was horrifying to me to think that there are congregations, in America, where the final thing they do before breaking fast is to all come together and sing HaTikvah, in that most heightened altered state of consciousness where everything feels like a religious experience. The most sacred day of the year and all that fasting and fervor is directed toward patriotism for a nation-state you don't even live in currently ruled by a fascist party. Fucking talk about the best holiday being made worst!! I understand why people might be sympathetic to the State of Israel but you don't gotta be religious about it. It's a government. It's not sacred. It's earthly. It's not G—d. Fortunately, my congregation did not sing HaTikvah in shul.
I have, however, been to multiple other shuls that used the tune of HaTikvah when saying the second blessing before the sh'ma on shabbat morning, the blessing where you gather the four corners of your tzitzit and say "bring us in peace from the four corners of the earth." What was originally a prayer for the coming of the moshiach, an end to war and hunger, and the coming of Olam HaBa; is re-contextualized by inserting the national anthem of a nation-state, and turns this blessing into a prayer for the mass-immigration of Jews to the fascist-governed nation-state called Israel in order to maintain a majority. Alas, it is not being "brought in peace" if you are participating in colonial violence and illegal settlements, displacing communities and turning the gaza strip into an open air prison. Perhaps we once could have ended the diaspora peacefully but you done fucked it up now and made that pretty much impossible.
and Shabbat just might be the best holiday, it comes every single week! But man, what a way to make it worse!