Purim 2021

 There are lots of different ways to “read” the Megillah.

The simplest, I suppose, would be to take it at face value as an historical account of the series of events that led to Purim becoming a universally observed Jewish holiday. Reading it this way would suppose that the personalities mentioned—and not just the major ones but even the minor characters who appear just once or twice in the story—were all real people and that they all played the specific roles the story assigns to them in the drama. This approach founders a bit on the fact that there are no traces of any of them other than King Achashveirosh (assuming he is correctly to be identified with Xerxes I) in any extra-biblical document, including any of the fairly voluminous works that chronicle Persian history during the period the story appears to be set. (For an excellent essay by Mitchell First on the question of whether Achashveirosh can reasonably be identified as Xerxes I, click here.) Still, that’s hardly proof-positive that none of them existed: lots of real people don’t make it into the history books! (But how many queens are in that category? Maybe that’s the more pertinent question to ask!)

Fortunately, there is no lack of alternate approaches.

Focusing on Queen Vashti’s principled refusal to degrade herself in public merely because her husband ordered her to and also on Queen Esther’s willingness to risk her own life for the sake of saving her people, it would be easy to read the Megillah as a feminist story intended to remind its audience that women—for all they are so often overlooked in ancient works of history—could and did play important roles at crucial junctures. But the Megillah could also be read as a work of proto-Zionism, one intended to drive home the point that, even in the very best of times, Jews living outside Israel are subject to the arbitrary anti-Semitism both of petulant foes like Haman and of naïve enablers like King Achashveirosh. And the book could also easily be read as a critique of the whole monarchic system of governance, one in which a drunken dunce like Achashverosh can be manipulated easily by wily advisers like Haman who are pursuing deeply personal agendas.

All of the above would be interesting to explore in more depth, but I would like to use this space this week to write about yet another approach to the Megillah, one inspired partially by last month’s assault on the Capitol and partially by the sense, dramatically heightened by those events, that there are elements out here whom we don’t know and haven’t ever met…but who nonetheless wish us harm.

As all regular reader of Megillat Esther know, the ninth chapter is the big one, the chapter in which all plot lines converge to produce a satisfying dénouement fully worthy of annual celebration. Indeed, it is the only chapter that actually takes place during the month of Adar, the month of Purim. (Almost all the action up to that point—including Haman’s casting of lots, King Achashveirosh’s order that Haman parade Mordecai through the streets to honor him for his good deed, both of the banquets that Esther prepares for Haman and Mordechai, and the fabulous scene in which Haman flings himself as Esther’s feet and knocks her over just as King Achashveirosh comes back into the room, only to end up sentenced to death and finally impaled on the execution post he had had prepared for Mordechai—all of that takes place almost a full year earlier during the previous Pesach. Then came the wrangling over how to stop the pogrom that led to an official edict promulgated on 23 Sivan, exactly two months later, that granted the Jews permission to defend themselves against their enemies.) And now, as chapter nine begins, almost a full year has passed and the big day is finally here.   

That ninth chapter is one we all read far too quickly through, and particularly if we want to read it the way I would like to propose today. But let’s start with that edict of 23 Sivan, the one executed in the first places because King Achashveirosh, the supreme ruler of an entire empire, lacked the legal authority to rescind one of his own edicts merely because the original copy was stamped with the mark of his signet ring. The whole idea that an absolute monarch can’t countermand one of his own edicts is idiotic and, indeed, the notion that an edict promulgated in the king’s name and sealed with his seal cannot be withdrawn is not known from any other Persian documents from the era. (It also directly contradicts the passage at the end of  chapter one that says that the specific way to make an edict not rescindable is for it formally to be “written up among the laws of the Persians and the Medes.”) So we’re being challenged to read with our eyes wide open. And what the new edict says is, to say the least, startling. First, there is to be defense:

Jewish men in every city of the kingdom are formally granted permission to organize local militias with the express purpose of defending the Jewish population by endeavoring to destroy, exterminate, and annihilate the thugs of every people and ethnicity who were planning such ill for them, their children and their wives, and then by plundering all their foes’ possessions.

And then there is to be offense as well:

Over and above the right to defend themselves, the Jews in every province over which King Achashveirosh rules are also to be permitted, albeit only on one single day, to wit the thirteenth day of the twelfth month called Adar, to advance forcefully against their enemies and to seek revenge for the degree to which these foes had embraced the awful plot hatched against the Jews by wicked Haman.

So that’s pretty clear. And what happens the next spring is precisely what the text says will happen. On the thirteenth of Adar, the day Haman had planned to annihilate the Jews of Persia, the Jews rise up against their enemies. In Shushan alone, five hundred foes are killed. Then, after receiving royal dispensation to keep at it for one extra day, another three hundred are killed. In the rest of the empire, things go just as swimmingly: on the thirteenth day of Adar alone, a full 75,000 are killed, bringing the two-day total to 75,800 dead sonim. We are clearly meant to understand that there are no Jewish losses at all. Nor was this at all unexpected: at the end of the previous chapter, the Megillah notes that there was such anxiety afoot among those who had planned to attack the Jews that some pathetically attempted to disguise themselves as Jews so as not to be subject to their would-be victims’ wrath.

And now we get to the question that will challenge thoughtful readers. The enemy is completely demoralized, the fight clearly completely out of them. They don’t put up any resistance; the major plot detail that the permission granted them to go on the attack and to attempt to annihilate the Jewish population has not been withdrawn seems totally to be forgotten. Like most bullies, I suppose, they fold easily when facing real opposition. And this appears to have been the case despite the fact that the Jews were surely a tiny minority group in an enormous sea of Gentiles. Surely, they could have taken the Jews on even despite the permission granted the latter to fight back…or at least they could have tried. But they seem to have totally forgotten about their might, about the potential in their numbers, and about the full legality of their pending Aktion against the Jewish population. It feels, at least plausibly, that there is no real danger to the Jews of the realm on that fateful day: they go on the offensive and annihilate foes fully cowed into submission by the mere possibility of their would-be victims fighting back. How else could there have been no Jewish casualties at all?

And so we come to pathetic truth behind the narrative. The Jews could have defended themselves anyway. (Why couldn’t they have? Was fighting off your would-be murderer illegal in Old Persia?) The mob of anti-Semites retains its right to go on the offensive. So, really, nothing has changed at all. Except—this is the pathetic part—that a Gentile king (and, at that, a drunken oaf like Achashveirosh) told the Jews they could stand up for themselves. Which they could have anyway…but didn’t. Or wouldn’t have. Until someone formally gave them permission.

We feel safe, we American Jews. We trust the police, have faith in our government, feel secure enough (most of the time) to look past the occasional anti-Semitic remark by a member of Congress. We buy homes with twenty- or thirty-year mortgages because we expect to be living in them decades in the future. And we haven’t fled to Israel for the same reason. I know all the above because I feel that way myself! And then suddenly there are organized anti-Semites marching through the streets of downtown Charlottesville. A comedian we all thought of as super-hip and wholly benign tells an overtly anti-Semitic joke on television and only we seem to notice. The Capitol is overrun by insurrectionists, some of whom are openly displaying anti-Semitic slogans and symbols…and no one seems quite sure what to do about it. Are racist slogans on t-shirts protected by the First Amendment? Suddenly, the answer to that question seems to determine whom you ask for an answer.

The Megillah could not be clearer in its message that it is neither cogent nor effective solely to respond to anti-Semitism by reacting to it ex post facto. The Bible’s solution—that we go on the attack and annihilate our would-be annihilators before they have a chance to do the same to us—is obviously not something any normal citizen, Jewish or not, would countenance. But the lessons the Megillah teaches in this regards remains pertinent and timely. No one needs permission to stand up for his or her rights. The pathetic image of Persian Jewry finding the strength to oppose its own annihilation only when the government formally permits them to do so is meant to be both embarrassing and chastening. Helping bigots to divest themselves of their bigotry before anyone gets hurt is an excellent plan. But the Megillah teaches that that can only be undertaken successfully by people possessed of confidence, self-reliance, and unwavering certainty in their own right to exist and to flourish.