For Such a Time as This

It didn’t happen all at once. It took work to shed the names, accents, and customs of our immigrant forebearers, but eventually, we did it. An unspoken bargain was struck: What we would lose in distinctiveness, we would gain in societal acceptance. Once excluded from the halls of power – politics, professions, and elite campus life – we became the creators, defenders, and even funders of those very institutions. From outsiders to insiders in one-hundred years – give or take a generation. We waxed nostalgic about our humble beginnings. Like a great-grandmother’s tablecloth those stories from the past made us grateful for our present blessings. In the abstract, we longed for a return to the land. “Next Year in Jerusalem,” we said at our seder tables. In practice, we were no longer homeless; the diaspora was our home now. We had made it. 

The blessings were real, the going was good. So, who could blame us for being shocked to discover that it was all a mirage. A feeling of whiplash, the rug being pulled out from beneath our feet. For the first time in our lives, we were made to feel as “the other.” How could this be? In our own mind, the line between “us” and “them” had long since been blurred, and yet, because of our faith, because of our fealty to our historic homeland, we were being made to feel not just different, but somehow a threat to the social order. It was a disorienting feeling that morphed quickly into a disquieting – and actual – fear. People were saying that we were different, that we didn’t belong. Turns out those political, professional, and educational institutions in which we believed ourselves to be stakeholders were far less hospitable to us than we thought. All lives, it would seem, mattered – except Jewish ones. Our golden age was over, or maybe, it was never so golden after all.

The uptick in antisemitism was sharp, but far from uniform. It came in different forms. There was the high-minded kind: people spouting hateful ideas cloaked in claims of the public good. Then there was plain old thuggery: violence and the threat of violence against Jewish people and property. Blindsided as we were, we did not have the time or luxury to be armchair sociologists. We had to respond. We circled the wagons and began to ask ourselves questions we had never asked before. Was this a time to assert our Jewish identities or to keep our heads down? Better to fight from within the halls of power or effect change from the outside? Dig in, or find another home? We had taken our Jewish identity for granted for so long. And now, for the first time in our lives, we began to ask what kind of Jews we wanted to be. Where do we turn for guidance for such a time as this?

Today we announce the new month of Adar and with it, the countdown to the festival of Purim and the story of Esther. Megillat Esther is one of the five scrolls, megillot, found in the third section of the Hebrew Bible known as the Writings, Ketuvim. Not only is Esther one of the most beautifully crafted of all biblical literary creations, but some of its features make it rare if not unique in the biblical canon. First, and most obviously, its namesake and main character is a woman – no small thing in the boys' club of the Bible. Second, and unlike every other book of the Bible, it does not contain the name of God. Third, and importantly for our purposes, it tells the story of a Jewish community established outside of Israel. Exiled from the Promised Land to Babylon in 586 BCE, the Jewish community establishes itself under Nebuchadnezzar, whose empire would be conquered in 539 BCE by Persia’s Cyrus the Great. Megillat Esther tells the tale of how a diaspora Jewish community navigated its status as a distinct minority in the majority culture of Persia’s capital Shushan, making it a remarkable and remarkably relevant prism through which to understand our present moment.

Having deposed Queen Vashti after her refusal to appear at the royal banquet, King Ahasuerus issues an edict to bring forth every young maiden for consideration to be the new royal consort. While this event is staged the world over as some sort of Miss Persia beauty pageant, a careful reading of the text suggests a more ambiguous and darker possibility. Was this palace proclamation a voluntary call-up or a mandatory summons? For the maidens in question and their families, was it an invitation to social advancement or a fear-inducing edict akin to Pharaoh’s decree against the male children in the book of Exodus? Not only are both readings plausible, they can exist side-by-side. Opportunity and fear: a possibility to move up in which much would be given up.

On cue, Esther is introduced. Though her given name is Hadassah, her secular name is Esther, from the Hebrew word astir, meaning “I will hide.” What Esther is hiding will become evident as the story progresses. In addition to her physical beauty, we learn a few more facts about Esther. First, she is an orphan; she is the ward of her foster father, Mordecai. Second, as maiden in a man’s world, her destiny is not her own. Summoned by the king and at the direction of Mordecai, she is entered into the royal pageant. Third, and perhaps most significantly, she is a member of the Jewish community. Mordecai is actually the first person in the Bible to be called a Jew, yehudi. The Hebrew word yehudi refers to one descended from the tribe and land of Yehudah or Judah. Prior to exile there were no distinctions between one’s national and religious identity. Only in the diaspora would Jews have to grapple with the complexities of their identity. Citizens of their host country, but distinct as a people, with their gaze ever directed to an ancestral land. One senses that Esther’s orphaned status was not just biological. Separated from her family of origin and her land, she was Jew-ish, a Judean exile in King Ahasuerus’s court.

When Esther enters into the king’s palace for consideration, Mordecai advises her to keep her Jewishness secret. He never explains why she must do so, but Esther understands that her life will be either easier or safer, or both, if she hides her identity. Was it easy or hard for Esther to keep her secret? Did she do so under duress or out of desire for advancement? The text never really says. What the text does say is that in the months to come, her outward transformation is beyond anything she could have imagined. Twelve months of oil and myrrh, perfumes, and cosmetics, a makeover process worthy of the best – and worst – of reality TV. 

Esther’s transformation enables her to shed any vestigial traces of her national and religious origins and upwardly assimilate into her non-Jewish environs. Becoming queen not just by marrying a king, but a non-Jewish king, is the ultimate act of assimilation. Esther has gained so much, but in doing so, has also left much behind. One wonders how she felt when she looked in the mirror and saw a Persian queen looking back at her. She could “pass” as a non-Jew – an outcome she may have imagined, dreamt of, or feared – an outcome that had become her reality.

If the first two chapters of Megillat Esther signal the comforts of Persian Jewish life, the bottom falls out in the third chapter, when Haman, a descendent of Biblical Israel’s historic enemy Agag, is promoted in the king’s court. Mordecai refuses to bow down to Haman. Having just advised Esther to conceal her identity, Mordecai’s refusal to kneel is perplexing. His actions become a reflection on all Jews and put his entire people in danger. Would a curtsy as Haman’s procession passed by really have been so difficult? As uneasy as we were at Esther’s immersion into her Persian identity, we are puzzled at Mordecai’s refusal to give an inch to Persian authority. Neither Esther’s choices nor Mordecai’s are perfect. Both come with cost and consequence.

Haman’s wrath waxes hot. A lot is thrown, a date is set for the destruction of the Jews. Haman brings the matter to the King’s attention:

“There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among all the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws; and it is not in Your Majesty’s interest to tolerate them. If it please Your Majesty, let an edict be drawn for their destruction.” (Esther 3:8–9) 

The most significant thing about Haman’s words is not what he says, but what he doesn’t. He never mentions that the people in question are Jews. A fifth column exists within the kingdom, and Ahasuerus, operating either out of willed ignorance or political expediency, gives the green light for them to be destroyed. As news of the edict spreads through the Kingdom, we read that the city of Shushan was “dumbfounded.” Shushan’s general population do not seem to bear the same Jew-hatred as Haman, but it would take a rare form of courage for an everyday Persian to object to him, a fact which Haman was probably counting on. The virus of antisemitism needs only one entry point to spread systemically. Haman understood that his hatred combined with the king’s enabling and a nation of bystanders was all he needed to carry out his dastardly plans. 

The decisive turning point arrives in chapter four. Mordecai relays the ominous news of Haman’s edict to Esther, imploring her to appeal to the king and plead on behalf of her people. Esther hedges, sending a message back to Mordecai that on penalty of death she cannot enter the king’s presence. Mordecai sends back a forceful reply:

“Do not imagine that you, of all Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king’s palace. On the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, perhaps you have attained to a royal position for just such a time as this.” (4:13–14)

Mordecai’s rhetoric seeks to persuade Esther on several fronts. Invoking the pull of peoplehood, Mordecai links Esther’s fate both to that of her imperiled contemporaries and to her ancestral roots. Like Moses, who, from the comfort of Pharaoh’s palace, came to identify with his oppressed kin, so too must Esther. Mordecai makes clear that Esther’s fate is tied to all Jews. Her true identity will eventually come out, and not even her royal status will offer protection. Both she, and her father’s house, will be wiped out. 

The judgment of history, Mordecai argues, is upon her. Should she remain silent, the Jews will be saved from another quarter; but her inglorious inaction, will be remembered. Esther knows that Mordecai knows, that they both know, that but for the chance events of the prior chapters she would not be sitting on the royal throne. Who knows, if it was not “for just such a time as this” that Esther arrived at her station in life? Now is the time for moral courage.

And for the first time in Esther’s life, she becomes the protagonist of her eponymous tale. She instructs Mordecai to assemble all the Jews to fast. In breach of protocol, and at great personal risk, she seeks an audience with the king. She may perish, but she will no longer keep her identity nistar, hidden. Esther has come out from the shadows as a Jew, a woman, and a queen, leaning into all three aspects of her being. A heroine for her time, a heroine for our time. 

Esther’s persona stands as an enduring parable for Jewish identity: we see our story in the inchoate nature of her early Jewish self and the “bargain” she makes in entering Persian society. So too, the whiplash of discovering the precarious nature of diaspora existence with its haters, enablers, and bystanders; that also strikes close to home. We feel for Esther as she squirms in her indecision. “Is this really my fight? I could lose so much – even my life. Besides, who am I to turn the tide of history?” Esther’s struggle is very much our own.

And it is Esther to whom we turn for direction on what it means to be a Jew today. Esther risks it all: power, popularity, prestige, and social acceptance. She risks her own life for the life of her people. Esther didn’t choose her moment, it chose her – Purim is all about chance, after all – but when that moment arrived, she put herself on the line. She threw her lot in with her people. She rallied to action, bold, intrepid, and fearless. She is unapologetic about her roots, about her station in life, and the right of her people to stand tall as both citizens and Jews. Most of all, she refuses to let her Judaism and Jewish identity be defined by the hatred of others.

Kiy’mu v’kiblu ha-yehudim, “the Jews affirmed and accepted,” the text notes in a later chapter (9:27), a statement understood by the rabbis to signal a joyful and volitional acceptance of Jewish identity. Esther the person and Esther the book are important not merely because of what they teach about fighting Jew-hatred. They are important because they teach that Jew-haters do not get to define the Jewishness of Jews – Jews do. And we choose to do so by way of orah, v’simhah, sasson v’yikar, “light, joy, gladness, and honor.” (8:16)

Ours is an Esther moment. We too have made bargains with modernity; we too have adapted to our host culture only to discover that we are not quite as at home as we thought we were. Who knows if it was not for just such a time as this that we arrived at our station in life? We can’t know for sure, but we dare not risk being on the wrong side of the question. Some things are better not left to chance. Today and every day, as did Esther before us, may we stand connected to our people, vigilant on behalf of their well-being, and most of all, living proud, joyful, and honorable Jewish lives.