Rabbi 360

Today is Purim, when we read the story of the biblical Book of Esther, also called megillat Esther, the scroll of Esther. It tells the story of Esther who, after initially hiding her Jewish identity, uses her proximity to power to subvert a plan to eliminate the Jewish population of the Persian Empire.

The story reads like, and is potentially meant to be, a farce, with exaggerated scenarios and nonsense names. We celebrate the holiday and the reading with laughter and fun, drowning out the antagonist Haman’s name with noisemakers, dressing in costume, and having a good time. And at the same time, the themes in the scroll of extermination, revenge, hatred, and misogyny are not only serious but very real.

Which makes reading the story of Esther this year that much more resonant. If we think about Haman as an unelected advisor to the chief executive who pays for policy and attempts to remake the fabric of his society, the echoes to what is happening today are ever more real. The story’s scapegoating of an entire community based on the perceived threats of a few representatives of that community is happening very much today. (Plus, of course, the increase in implicit and explicit antisemitism, which is a direct line from the book to today.)

And yet, the story ends on joy and celebration as Haman’s plot to destroy the Jews was overturned, and Esther’s cousin/guardian Mordecai becomes an important leader. The story provides hope what whenever tyranny rears its head, it will be defeated.

And yet, the path to that hope in the story can be challenging. It is reliant on the courage of one person who happened to be in a position of power. And she got to that position by compromising her identity, hiding her Jewishness until it was safe and meaningful to reveal it, and by working within a system that exploited women and valued them only for their beauty and other superficial reasons.

Esther should be lauded for the hero she is, for despite this repressive society, she does act courageously, embraces fully and publicly her Jewish identity, and proves that her worth is not from external physical appearance but internal intelligence, deliberation, and resilience. We can find hope in that Esther provides a model for us for when we have the opportunity to stand up to evil, we too can heed Mordecai’s words of inspiration, “And who knows, perhaps you have attained to your position for a time such as this.” (Esther 4:14)

And while this gives me hope, there is an earlier verse that inspired me when I reread the story this year, a verse that I have often glossed over and not considered fully. In the earlier part of the story, Haman makes his pitch to King Ahasuerus to issue an edict that would get rid of all the Jews. Insulted by Mordecai’s refusal to bow down to him, Haman wishes to exterminate the Jews and so makes a deposit into the royal treasury and proposes the plan. The king is happy to oblige and issues the decree that the extermination will take place on a future date set by lottery. The edict is drawn up and messengers are sent to every province of the kingdom to communicate the command.

And at the end of chapter 3, we read, “The couriers went out posthaste on the royal mission, and the decree was proclaimed in the fortress Shushan. The king and Haman sat down to feast, but the city of Shushan was perplexed (navochah).” (Esther 3:15)

I had always read this as a simple verse that completes the story of the issuing of the decree. But this verse is fascinating in that it gives us an important detail about that decree: the King and Haman are content and go off to raise a glass, but everyone else is shocked at its content.

It is this popular shock that gives me hope. We can read this verse as the population objecting to the King’s law and Haman’s plan. Esther therefore wasn’t promoting a moral position against the tide of public opinion, she was advancing a moral position that had popular support. She was not an outlier, she represented the majority. It was the king and Haman who were out of touch with the sentiment of the population.

We know that the ally of an authoritarian regime is complacency. We can not afford to not be shocked by the twists and turns that are coming out of our government or any government. When we hear decrees that target vulnerable populations or threaten violence or manufacture instability, we too feel navochah. And it is on us to not only feel it, but express it.

The story of Esther is a story of one person acting heroically to overthrow tyranny. And the story of Esther is the story of a population troubled by the actions of its leadership. We can imagine that Esther was able to do what she did not despite the feeling of the population, but because of it. And herein lies the hope: our leaders can do heroic things if we the people put pressure on our leaders. We can’t always rely on one person to save us—the real power lies with the people.