"Also, alas, that interpretation would render Purim a big snooze."

March 4, 2015 4:03 PM

Purim Perils: His View Is His Own: "Purim excites some and vexes others. Or, it vexes some that others are excited."

How To Take Purim Seriously: "So while I enjoyed Rabbi Landes’s reading of the Purim story, let us not forget it is essentially a holiday of revenge."

The Problem with Purim: "Unfortunately, this effort to modernize the Purim story lionizes the wrong woman, promotes a false political message of nonviolence and tolerance, and worst of all embraces failure instead of promoting perhaps the greatest of Jewish heroines."

The Ghosts of Purim Past: "The holiday's violent beginnings—and what they mean for the Jewish future."

A Violent Ending: "The ending of the Purim story can certainly be read as a legitimate battle of self-defense in which the Jews kill those who were instructed to destroy them; indeed, this is the way that most traditional Bible commentators have understood the episode. This understanding eases concerns about the nature of the violence, but does not fully respond either to the bloodiness of the battle or to the textual ambiguity about the identity of the victims."

posted by andoatnp (4 comments total)

Todah rabbah for adding Purim thinking before the drinking.
posted by Dreidl at 4:36 PM on March 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

This handwringing over the violence at the end of Megilat Esther is weird. If you accept it as a historical document (I understand that actual historians don't) then you presumably accept that it was legally-authorised self-defence against people who were getting ready to kill them. If you're reading it as allegory, fiction, or folklore, then the same reasoning applies. A number of the articles say that Baruch Goldstein committed his attack on Purim deliberately. That may well be the case, but it certainly hasn't been any sort of general inspiration for violence.

Incidentally, the criticisms of Esther's passivity are way off base. She's the only one in the story who deliberately exposes herself to danger; she's also the one who engineers the entire reversal of fortune, although the early groundwork she lays for it can easily go unnoticed.

Near the start of the book Mordechai overhears a plot to kill the king, and he reports it to Esther. The Megilla says that Esther told it to the king in the name of Mordechai. By doing that, and seeing that it was recorded, she laid the basis for Haman's destruction. Commenting on this, the Mishna says: "Whoever repeats something in the name of its author brings liberation (rescue? release? salvation?) to the world, as it says: And Esther told the king in the name of Mordechai."
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:50 PM on March 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

andoatnp: "The Problem with Purim: "Unfortunately, this effort to modernize the Purim story lionizes the wrong woman, promotes a false political message of nonviolence and tolerance, and worst of all embraces failure instead of promoting perhaps the greatest of Jewish heroines.""

The primary magazine of the neoconservative movement thinks we should celebrate the important message of killing a bunch of Persians before they can threaten the Jews? Imagine that.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:56 PM on March 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

If you accept it as a historical document...then you presumably accept that it was legally-authorised self-defence against people who were getting ready to kill them.

Not at all. The Bible's attitude to history (or pseudohistory) is often "here's a thing that happened." In some cases the writer of THAT story registers an opinion on the morality of what was done, in some cases we just get the bare facts and are left to ourselves to decide whether it was ethical and/or God-approved.

The Bible was written by many authors, and they argue with each other. Esther's author clearly believed that it is appropriate to use genocide to prevent genocide. I doubt that Jesus would agree.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 5:28 PM on March 4, 2015