Rabbi Mishael Zion | Text and the City | Purim 2016
Chapter Four.
A man walks through the city streets, wearing sack cloth and ashes. His entire
people have just been sentenced to death by the Grand Vizier. They are to be
killed in a day of public violence - in an empire that prides itself on its
multiculturalism. And in a twisted way, it is his fault. A long, bitter scream
emits from his mouth.
Chapters Eight
& Nine.
The same man walks through the city streets, dressed in blue sash and organdy,
himself having become the Grand Vizier. He is celebrated by all, much loved and
appreciated. This time it is his people who will be performing the public violence,
killing all those who sought to destroy them.
And we celebrate all this in two days of costumes and
noisemakers. No wonder Martin Luther declared that Jews “love the book of
Esther, which so well fits their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous greed and
hope.” (“On
the Jews and Their Lies” 1543)
Luther’s anti-Semitic criticism of Esther and of us, her
people, is ridiculous and chilling, precisely because Esther is a tale of power
and powerlessness writ large. Esther is unafraid to play out two pathologies of
power: the pathology of total disempowerment of a minority vulnerable to
violence in Chapter 4, and the pathology of total power turned into minority-inflicted violence in
Chapter 9 (thank you Yehuda Kurtzer for this succinct distillation). These two
chapters make battle in our public discourse constantly: are we living in
Chapter 4, the year is 1939, and an Iranian Haman is out to get us while world
leaders are busy getting drunk? Or, alternatively, are we living through a new
version of Chapter 9, with Jewish power reigning like never before both in our
majority-land and our minority-empire, allowing us to get away with
questionable moral actions in the name of self-defense?
And just like that, this silly children’s fable has pulled
us into dealing face to face with our deepest, darkest fears. Be it violence,
power, exile, sex, gender, drink – Esther lures us in with its fancy costumes
and silly pranks until we find ourselves talking about the most pivotal issues.
As I am in the process of writing a cultural commentary about the Scroll of
Esther, its becomes increasingly clear to: Esther Now.
Esther Now
More than the grand tale of leaving Egypt, more than the
human moments of Abraham and Sarah, more than the grand visions and rebukes of
the Prophets, it is Esther that is the most relevant book of the Bible.
Esther Now because it is the book of Jewish power and
politics, and of Diaspora and disempowerment. It is the book of getting a seat
at the table – and the prices we’re willing, or unwilling, to pay for that seat.
It’s the book where the personal is the political and the political is the
physical. It’s the book of gender, identity, political violence, sexual
violence, success, individualism and calling. It is also the book of unknowing
(but that’s for next week’s essay).
Esther Now because hers is the last book of the
Bible, conceptually and chronologically; the scroll that bridges between the
God-infused world of the Bible and the God-vacant world of our reality. No
wonder the Rabbis read it as a “second Sinai”. It is the closest Biblical book
to our contemporary reality. “We are all servants of Ahasuerus now” (Talmud
Arakhin).You are free to read God into the tale if you want, seeing
providence and prayer and calling as real agents in the world, but even then,
you are a servant of Ahasuerus.
Esther Now because we are living through the tale of
the greatest Jewish Diaspora to ever exist, in an empire of 50 states with its
political pageants and Jewish courtesans. That other Jewish Diaspora, with its
127 states, places a funhouse mirror through which we can reassess ourselves.
Esther Now because the story is a farce, a parody, a
carnivalesque fast paced streaming series of beltway politics of the type that
has become so popular of late. But it is through farce that elephants in the
room can be unveiled.
Who will Esther 2016 Be?
 |
| Arthur Szyk drawing himself with Haman |
Each year, Purim invites the pundits to compare the current
political reality to the story of the megillah. Last year it was all about
Iran, with its Persian echoes. This year its going to be the Presidential
Candidates (although I’d love to see a thoughtful comparison to the Supreme
Court, contrasting Shushan’s farcical court of seven advisers who “know all
rules and regulations” and who step in when a dispute arises between the bodies
of power in the Capital to the nine wise-people of DC (oops, eight…)).
Theoretically, DC couldn’t be further afield from Shushan.
If anything, DC is Shushan after Mordechai’s rise to power. Of the four
(current) front runners in the presidential campaigns, one is Jewish, the other
sees zealous support of Israel as a central tenant of his faith, and two have
Jewish sons in law. We’ve never been closer to the king, who himself celebrates
Jewish rituals in his home.
On the flip-side, we’ve also sensed how a surprising
candidate out of left field, touting ego, money and race-baiting can turn a
whole empire on its head. We’ve felt the chilling realization that it can
happen here too (but not in Canada). Perhaps as minorities, our situation is
more precarious than we are willing to admit to ourselves. Maybe Chapter 4 is
not just history, perhaps it is a most probable future, if not to our minority
than to those around us.
On the flippity flip side, perhaps it is in our unprecedented
and quite sudden power that the greatest threat resides. Not the threat to the
Jews, but the threat of us as Jews, or our brethren, using power to make others
cower, bow and prostrate.
Flip side again, perhaps this attempt to translate a 2000
year old political metaphor into contemporary reality is a futile
experiment. Let’s stick to a close
textual reading, and see what we can make out it. It is those close readings
that remain real in the long run, even as the political envelope keeps going
topsy turvy.
All this should be sufficient to say that Esther merits a
close reading this year, one which I hope to share with you in the coming
weeks. To be continued…
