Esther and Jewish identity

A parable of Torah's abandonment and revival

Bagels and lox are good, but are they enough? Let’s have a brief bible study session on Esther. As usual.

We find in the writings of the Rebbe:

The Baal Shem Tov offered a unique interpretation of the Mishnah which states (Megillah 2:1), “One who reads the Megillah backwards has not performed his obligation.” If one reads the Megillah thinking that the events related in it happened only in the past — “backwards” — and it is not relevant now, he has not performed his obligation. The purpose in reading the Megillah is to learn how a Jew must conduct himself at all times, now as in the past.

This is along the lines of my general thought that the events of Tanakh have not, strictly speaking, happened yet. But—more to the point—it also tells us, concisely, that the Megillah (i.e., the Book of Esther) has something to tell us about our lives now.

The Megillah plays out like an extended narrative from the time of the Judges (Shoftim): the Jews find deliverance in a righteous individual or two after crying out to G-d.

But the first part of the narrative seems to be missing. In Shoftim, the Jews do something wrong, particularly idolatry, and that’s why the threat arises: for instance, we read toward the beginning of Shoftim, “G-d then handed them over to foes who plundered them [etc].” Rinse and repeat.

So, what did the Israelites of Persia do wrong in the Megillah? It’s not clear on plain reading of the text. Yet commentators have reached a sensible, if perhaps counterintuitive, and likely uncomfortable answer. The Jews grew too comfortable under a tolerant ruler, indicated in the text by their enjoyment of the Persian king’s feast.

Again, the Rebbe teaches well:

Was "enjoying the feast of the wicked King Achashverosh" so grave a sin that it warranted a decree of annihilation upon "all the Jews, young and old, children and women, on one day"?

But the problem was not so much their participation in the feast; indeed our Sages tell us that Achashverosh had supplied kosher food for his Jewish subjects. The problem was that they enjoyed the feast. With the royal kosher menu in hand, the exiled Jew felt he no longer needed G‑d for his survival.

The decree of annihilation was not a punishment, but a consequence of this attitude. Putting his faith in mortals, the Jew denied his supernatural status—the status of a nation whose very survival belies the laws of history. The Jew was now lonely and vulnerable to the decrees of a mortal Achashverosh.

Their Jewishness had worn thin, not from too much strife, but from an excess of comfort. They had their First Amendment rights and their bagels. Maybe their non-kosher grocery store had a section for Pesach that appears weirdly early every year.

Redemption only occurred for the Jews because they returned to G-d. As Esther tells Mordecai:

“Go, assemble all the Jews who live in Shushan, and fast in my behalf; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maidens will observe the same fast. [etc.]”

The Jews return to G-d through fasting - the opposite of their secular, if kosher, feasting earlier.

The story of the Megillah tells us something important in the grand story of the Jewish people. In alignment with the Rebbe’s words above, we find in Talmud that there is - as usual - a deeper meaning to the Purim story.

In Tractate Shabbat, the rabbis want to solve a potential issue: “The Jewish people can claim that they were coerced into accepting the Torah, and it is therefore not binding.” That’s a real concern! However, the answer comes from the Megillah.

Rava said: Even so, they again accepted it willingly in the time of Ahasuerus, as it is written: “The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them” (Esther 9:27), and he taught: The Jews ordained what they had already taken upon themselves through coercion at Sinai.

That passage comes after the Jews have been delivered - or, really, have delivered themselves, with the help of the Esther and her seven handmaidens. (The other “handmaid’s tale?”) The Jews have dedicated themselves to Torah irrevocably, unquestionably, at the end of the story of Esther.

Following that passage in the Megillah, the verse continues by describing that moment as the origin of the holiday of Purim, of which the following verse relates:

Consequently, these days are recalled and observed in every generation: by every family, every province, and every city. And these days of Purim shall never cease among the Jews, and the memory of them shall never perish among their descendants.

Purim is - like the only other eternal holiday - a holiday about remembering our commitment to Torah, something the Jews of Esther’s time had neglected due to overmuch ease. It was like a psychiatric patient who thinks they no longer need their medication, because they feel fine - only because the medication had resolved their symptoms.

The Jews had a brief vacation. It ended. We are never truly “immune from history.”

But I’m sure the bagels and lox were good.