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Unveiling the Secret of the Scroll of Esther
lawrencebush
March 4, 2012
by Aviva Cantor
[This opinion piece is dedicated to my maternal grandmother, Esther Eisengardt Friedman of Dubno (d. 1917).]
I originally viewed Megillat Esther as a kind of instructional manual for Jews about the dangers of the Diaspora, and the strategies for surviving them, and what the men -- who took responsibility for implementing these strategies -- expected of the women in facilitating their work. These strategies and the gender role division for carrying them out emerge from the book’s text.
But bearing in mind the fact that the root for “Esther” is hidden or secret, undertaking some literary archeology reveals the Megillah’s subtext: a glorification of assertive women as rescuers and a ridicule of sexist and/or powerful men as arrogant and also either evil, stupid or thoughtless. And the form this alternate and critical view of Jewish reality takes is that of a historical novel.
Let’s look at the three male protagonists: First there’s the narcissistic and evil Haman, the Grand Vizier of Persia. Insecure about his status, he gets all bent out of shape when Mordechai -- a Jewish guy who is not even a celebrity -- refuses to bow to him. To camouflage his self-esteem issues -- and/or maybe because he is a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semite whose genocidal proclivities were trip-wired by Mordechai’s act of refusal -- he overreacts in conceiving a plan to obliterate all the Jews.
Our second anti-hero is King Ahashverosh, who is narcissistic and stupid. He casually accedes to the desire of his officials and diplomats to exhibit Queen Vashti during their seven-day drinking spree. The man rules over 127 provinces; why didn’t he just say no?
Similarly with his instant agreement to Haman’s pogrom plan against the Jews, whom the King has never heard of before. Does he summon his top advisers for consultation as he did during the Great Crisis over Vashti’s refusal to appear at his revelry wearing the crown (and the Midrash adds ominously, “only the crown”)? No, he blithely signs the genocidal edict with even less concern than Colonel Blake of “MASH” signs Radar’s letters.
Now we come to Mordechai, the supposed hero of this epic. Telling the truth about him is a grim job but somebody’s got to do it: Mordechai comes across in the Megillah as arrogant and thoughtless. He is so obsessed with his status that he refuses to give a token tilt of his head to Haman, thus triggering a dangerous power struggle with the Grand Vizier. Why didn’t he just say yes?
Mordechai’s thoughtless in-your-face behavior is particularly reprehensible because he knows the Jews in his Diaspora country are not safe. That is why he allowed Esther, his niece and ward, to be drafted into the pool of Beauty Contestants, and why when she was chosen to be the new Queen he instructed her to stay in the closet in the palace. His pushing Esther into auditioning for Queen is in line with the classic survival strategy of getting Jews into high places in case they should be needed some day to intercede for the community to stop a looming disaster.
But in spite of his understanding the ever-present dangers and knowing the survival strategies designed to avert them, he goes out of his way to antagonize and provoke a powerful government official who may have bruited his anti-Semitic bilge around the palace gate, where Mordechai hangs out.
Later, when Mordechai orders Esther to go to the king and beg him to rescind the genocidal edict, he practically accuses her of cowardice and treachery when she points out that she has to first be summoned by the ruler. Don’t think, he writes, that you will be able to emerge unscathed during this massacre by passing as a non-Jew in the palace. It is mean-spirited in the extreme for Mordechai to accuse Esther of planning to pass during the pogrom when it was he himself who instructed her to hide her Jewish identity in the first place.
So here are our three male protagonists, all of them fools. Who but a proto-feminist would have the insight and the courage to show them in their true light? Megillat Esther is a feminist assault on masculinist behavior as evil (Haman), stupid (the king) and light-minded (Mordechai) – this last characteristic, incidentally, being the Talmud’s considered appraisal of women.
It is especially significant to notice how the author begins the Megillah with the Vashti story. She does this not primarily for plot reasons but to call attention to the patriarchal rationale of the necessity for male domination, as shown in the behavior of the king and his drinking buddies. This sets the scene for the unfolding of the Purim story that conclusively demonstrates the perilous consequences to Jews of this sexism.
When one of King Ahashverosh’s advisers suggests banishing Vashti for refusing to appear as commanded, he lets himself be persuaded by the misogynist argument that Vashti’s disobedience will do irreparable harm to “all the officers and all the peoples in all the provinces of King Ahashverosh. Every woman will come to know what the queen has done and this will make them treat their husbands with contempt.” Dethroning Vashti and publicizing it widely via an Empire-wide edict will cause “all women [to] give honor to their husbands, great and small alike.”
The feminist author lets everyone know from Chapter One that it is this masculinist ideology that is at the root of all the troubles the three fools will cause the Jews. It stands in sharp contrast to the actions of the heroic Esther, whose exemplary behavior advances the feminist view that Jewish survival requires not female obedience but the opposite: female assertiveness.
Esther starts out by obeying Uncle Mordechai according to the traditional behavior required of females. But with a pogrom looming, she is reprieved of the oppressive need to conceal her Jewish identity and suppress her assertiveness. She devises a successful strategy that even male commentators on the Megillah consider brilliant in causing Haman’s downfall and hanging.
Megillat Esther is not the only feminist book from the period between 300 BCE (when scholars believe it was written) and before and after 165 CE, when the Book of Judith and the Books of the Maccabees were penned.
Judith is an openly feminist historical novel relating how this courageous woman thwarted an invasion by an enemy army by beheading its general. It concludes: “No one dared to threaten the Israelites again in Judith’s lifetime and for a long time after her death” at 105.
The Fourth Book of Maccabees tells the story of an aged mother who encourages her seven sons to go to their painful and very grisly deaths rather than eat pig meat in the public square. The text praises her as “mother of the nation, champion of the Law, defender of faith and victor in the contest of the heart.”
How come Judith and the Fourth Book of Maccabees were never accepted into the official Scriptural canon, but Megillat Esther -- an equally feminist work -- was?
The answer may be that the feminist message in Megillat Esther is subtle and the book could actually be read as a guide for how Jewish women should be assertive only when they get the green light from the men because this is in the interests of the nation.
Additionally, the Megillah’s ending is that Mordechai becomes Grand Vizier, a job that should rightly have been given to Esther, who presumably reverts to pre-edict obedient feminine behavior now that her altruistic assertiveness is no longer deemed necessary. (As in every revolution, after it has succeeded the men dispatch the women back to the kitchen.) The Megillah’s conclusion can therefore be read as right, proper and instructive. But feminists should see it as tragic -- both for Esther and for the Jews.
Aviva Cantor, a journalist, is the author of Jewish Women, Jewish Men: The Legacy of Patriarchy in Jewish Life (Harper, 1995), a feminist exploration of Jewish history, culture and psychology; The Egalitarian Hagada”(Beruriah Books, 1992, 1996); The Jewish Women’s Bibliography, 1900-1986 (BiblioPress, 1986); numerous news stories and essays and 3 plays, including a feminist Purimshpiel. She was the originator /initiator of Lilith, the Jewish feminist magazine, and its founding co-editor in its first decade.
Copyright © Aviva Cantor 2012. All Rights Reserved.
But bearing in mind the fact that the root for “Esther” is hidden or secret, undertaking some literary archeology reveals the Megillah’s subtext: a glorification of assertive women as rescuers and a ridicule of sexist and/or powerful men as arrogant and also either evil, stupid or thoughtless. And the form this alternate and critical view of Jewish reality takes is that of a historical novel.
Let’s look at the three male protagonists: First there’s the narcissistic and evil Haman, the Grand Vizier of Persia. Insecure about his status, he gets all bent out of shape when Mordechai -- a Jewish guy who is not even a celebrity -- refuses to bow to him. To camouflage his self-esteem issues -- and/or maybe because he is a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semite whose genocidal proclivities were trip-wired by Mordechai’s act of refusal -- he overreacts in conceiving a plan to obliterate all the Jews.
Our second anti-hero is King Ahashverosh, who is narcissistic and stupid. He casually accedes to the desire of his officials and diplomats to exhibit Queen Vashti during their seven-day drinking spree. The man rules over 127 provinces; why didn’t he just say no?
Similarly with his instant agreement to Haman’s pogrom plan against the Jews, whom the King has never heard of before. Does he summon his top advisers for consultation as he did during the Great Crisis over Vashti’s refusal to appear at his revelry wearing the crown (and the Midrash adds ominously, “only the crown”)? No, he blithely signs the genocidal edict with even less concern than Colonel Blake of “MASH” signs Radar’s letters.
Now we come to Mordechai, the supposed hero of this epic. Telling the truth about him is a grim job but somebody’s got to do it: Mordechai comes across in the Megillah as arrogant and thoughtless. He is so obsessed with his status that he refuses to give a token tilt of his head to Haman, thus triggering a dangerous power struggle with the Grand Vizier. Why didn’t he just say yes?
Mordechai’s thoughtless in-your-face behavior is particularly reprehensible because he knows the Jews in his Diaspora country are not safe. That is why he allowed Esther, his niece and ward, to be drafted into the pool of Beauty Contestants, and why when she was chosen to be the new Queen he instructed her to stay in the closet in the palace. His pushing Esther into auditioning for Queen is in line with the classic survival strategy of getting Jews into high places in case they should be needed some day to intercede for the community to stop a looming disaster.
But in spite of his understanding the ever-present dangers and knowing the survival strategies designed to avert them, he goes out of his way to antagonize and provoke a powerful government official who may have bruited his anti-Semitic bilge around the palace gate, where Mordechai hangs out.
Later, when Mordechai orders Esther to go to the king and beg him to rescind the genocidal edict, he practically accuses her of cowardice and treachery when she points out that she has to first be summoned by the ruler. Don’t think, he writes, that you will be able to emerge unscathed during this massacre by passing as a non-Jew in the palace. It is mean-spirited in the extreme for Mordechai to accuse Esther of planning to pass during the pogrom when it was he himself who instructed her to hide her Jewish identity in the first place.
So here are our three male protagonists, all of them fools. Who but a proto-feminist would have the insight and the courage to show them in their true light? Megillat Esther is a feminist assault on masculinist behavior as evil (Haman), stupid (the king) and light-minded (Mordechai) – this last characteristic, incidentally, being the Talmud’s considered appraisal of women.
It is especially significant to notice how the author begins the Megillah with the Vashti story. She does this not primarily for plot reasons but to call attention to the patriarchal rationale of the necessity for male domination, as shown in the behavior of the king and his drinking buddies. This sets the scene for the unfolding of the Purim story that conclusively demonstrates the perilous consequences to Jews of this sexism.
When one of King Ahashverosh’s advisers suggests banishing Vashti for refusing to appear as commanded, he lets himself be persuaded by the misogynist argument that Vashti’s disobedience will do irreparable harm to “all the officers and all the peoples in all the provinces of King Ahashverosh. Every woman will come to know what the queen has done and this will make them treat their husbands with contempt.” Dethroning Vashti and publicizing it widely via an Empire-wide edict will cause “all women [to] give honor to their husbands, great and small alike.”
The feminist author lets everyone know from Chapter One that it is this masculinist ideology that is at the root of all the troubles the three fools will cause the Jews. It stands in sharp contrast to the actions of the heroic Esther, whose exemplary behavior advances the feminist view that Jewish survival requires not female obedience but the opposite: female assertiveness.
Esther starts out by obeying Uncle Mordechai according to the traditional behavior required of females. But with a pogrom looming, she is reprieved of the oppressive need to conceal her Jewish identity and suppress her assertiveness. She devises a successful strategy that even male commentators on the Megillah consider brilliant in causing Haman’s downfall and hanging.
Megillat Esther is not the only feminist book from the period between 300 BCE (when scholars believe it was written) and before and after 165 CE, when the Book of Judith and the Books of the Maccabees were penned.
Judith is an openly feminist historical novel relating how this courageous woman thwarted an invasion by an enemy army by beheading its general. It concludes: “No one dared to threaten the Israelites again in Judith’s lifetime and for a long time after her death” at 105.
The Fourth Book of Maccabees tells the story of an aged mother who encourages her seven sons to go to their painful and very grisly deaths rather than eat pig meat in the public square. The text praises her as “mother of the nation, champion of the Law, defender of faith and victor in the contest of the heart.”
How come Judith and the Fourth Book of Maccabees were never accepted into the official Scriptural canon, but Megillat Esther -- an equally feminist work -- was?
The answer may be that the feminist message in Megillat Esther is subtle and the book could actually be read as a guide for how Jewish women should be assertive only when they get the green light from the men because this is in the interests of the nation.
Additionally, the Megillah’s ending is that Mordechai becomes Grand Vizier, a job that should rightly have been given to Esther, who presumably reverts to pre-edict obedient feminine behavior now that her altruistic assertiveness is no longer deemed necessary. (As in every revolution, after it has succeeded the men dispatch the women back to the kitchen.) The Megillah’s conclusion can therefore be read as right, proper and instructive. But feminists should see it as tragic -- both for Esther and for the Jews.
Aviva Cantor, a journalist, is the author of Jewish Women, Jewish Men: The Legacy of Patriarchy in Jewish Life (Harper, 1995), a feminist exploration of Jewish history, culture and psychology; The Egalitarian Hagada”(Beruriah Books, 1992, 1996); The Jewish Women’s Bibliography, 1900-1986 (BiblioPress, 1986); numerous news stories and essays and 3 plays, including a feminist Purimshpiel. She was the originator /initiator of Lilith, the Jewish feminist magazine, and its founding co-editor in its first decade.
Copyright © Aviva Cantor 2012. All Rights Reserved.
