Purim II — How Purim Worked for an Oppressed People — And How Power Makes It Dangerous
by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
In this letter I want to explore how Purim worked for centuries of Am Yisrael, the Godwrestling Folk, the Jewish People. Especially I want to look at Megillat Esther, the Scroll of Esther — which claims to have invented, explained, and justified Purim.
Many modern scholars think it was the other way round. That Purim Invented Esther and Mordechai, plus an empty-headed King and his vile and violent Prime Minister. That some brilliant Jewish satirist drew on a widespread multicultural early-spring festival (named “Purim” or maybe something else) to offer a humiliated and oppressed people a spring of hilarity, jokes, and upside-down satire. A satire that spoke hidden Truth to the disempowered people, giving birth to the fictional, satirical story of the Scroll of Esther!
And the People loved it.
If this seem strange to you, think of Jonathan Swift, an Irish satirist a thousand years later who tried to comfort his defeated and occupied people by satires of the English occupiers: “A Modest Proposal” suggested that the English deal with the problem of Irish starvation caused by English oppression this way: feeding new and juicy Irish babies to their famished parents. Swift’s four Gulliver’s Travels ended with a fictional nation where the decent, ethical, peaceful, noble-hearted mammals were a species of horses called Houyhnhnms (pronounced like a horse’s whinny) and the humans — called “Yahoos” — were selfish, greedy, cowardly, and violent.
Now look at the Scroll of Esther. It starts with a drinking, drunken party one hundred days long of all the Persian Empire’s leaders. Way overreaching. It ends with frightened Jews responding to a failed threat of genocide by slaughtering 75,000 Persians. Way overreaching. Even our best and wisest leaders are subject to satire.
Very enjoyable for early spring by a people hungry for tales of triumph, guffaws of giddiness.
Grogger in motion. Photo: Joe King, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
And now let’s look at the main story. It embodies two jokes — really the same structural joke. One that makes fun of antisemitism. One that makes fun of anti-feminism.
And what is the joke structure that they share? The hero “hoist by his own petard.” Or, if you prefer, a comic figure tossing his trashy banana peel on the floor; then stepping on the peel and come crashing down on his shattered head.
In the Scroll of Esther, twice:
Banana Peel 1: King Ahasuerus starts the action by banishing Queen Vashti from that hundred-day drinking party. Why? No woman in my kingdom is ever going to tell her husband what to do. And the King (with Esther’s wise and crucial intervention) makes the story of the Scroll end precisely with Queen Esther telling the King exactly what to do. And he does it.
“Esther Denouncing Haman”. Women of the Bible. H.A. Thompson, D.D. LL.D., 1914.
Banana Peel 2: Prime Minister Haman (Oops; I mentioned his name; drown it out, rattle your grogger or bang a pot with a spoon) has in mind first humiliating and then killing Jewish leader Mordechai. Haman (Boooo) ends up hanged on the same gallows he had planned for Mordechai. Bloodier than that slippery banana peel. Befitting a genocidal murderer.
So the story is funny, a biting critique of various harebrained Heads of State. If a subjugated people knows it is a satire and laugh their heads off at it in early spring, wonderful.
But if they not only get their own machine guns and some of them think the Scroll is factual history and decide to imitate Chapter 9, we have Purim 1994 (which I wrote about yesterday). Twenty-nine innocent people murdered, a real disaster.
If many Jews set up a modern State with an army, submarines, H-Bombs, and an air force to make impossible a second real genocide of the Godwrestling Folk, and then punish a murderous and atrocity-filled attack on the people of that state (dead: about 1,200; abducted: about 200).
And then punishes that attack by killing about 26,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them noncombatant children and women, we face an upside-down Purim that is taking place in real time and space that is really a catastrophe. Not a joke.
Many people around the world, and several thousand American Jews in civil-disobedience events, have said the best way to start healing this catastrophe would be a multilateral cease-fire and release of abductees. The International Court of Justice has just ordered a more nuanced urgent action by the government of Israel to greatly decrease danger to Gazan civilians and greatly increase humanitarian aid to suffering Gazans.
The Court has no means of its own to enforce its decisions. It will take world-wide pressure by governments, businesses, religious and other civil-society organizations, and millions of individuals, to bring about those changes. For my own personal thoughts on the Court process, see our “From the Desk of Arthur Waskow” mailed separately on Monday.
What can we do at and as The Shalom Center? We can turn to our work for actifests — activist festivals to transform the future, not only celebrate the past, real or fictional.
We can uproot the notion that Chapter 9 of the Scroll of Esther reports factual history or that it should be imitated by the present or any government of the modern State of Israel.
How do this? Arlene Goldbard, a former long-time President of the Board of The Shalom Center, has suggested we ask "What would Queen Esther do today in this fictional satirical critique of badly misused power?" Goldbard will be sharing her suggestions for a renewed understanding of Esther’s queenly wisdom in our mailings. She will be joined by others we invite to offer their insights.
The Rabbis instituted the only sacred observance named for a woman by calling for Ta'anit Esther, the Fast of Esther. It usually falls from dawn to dusk the day before Purim, but because this year Purim avoids Shabbat by moving to Saturday night / Sunday March 23-24, Ta'anit Esther will be held early — from dawn to dusk on Thursday, March 21.
We srrongly encourage Jewish, Christian, and other communities for whom the Scroll of Esther is sacred and/or wise to prepare to use and share new versions of it.
Can this make a difference? Think back about how the Rabbis’ midrashic reinterpretation totally changed the nature of Shavuot from harvest festival to the gift of Torah. Think how modern reinterpretation made it possible for women, gay, and queer Jews to become rabbis and full members of Jewish congregations.
Jews now hold great political and military power in one state and great political and economic power in at least one other. That has changed the meaning of Purim from what it meant to an oppressed people to what it means now — changed mostly to the bad and very bad. We must reinterpret Purim and Ta'anit Esther for the good.
Blessings of growing shalom in your own lives to all our companions in the struggle to seed and grow shalom in the world.
— Arthur
Read the other posts in this series:
Purim I — Why a Purim Massacre at Abraham's Tomb?