Lech Lecha: Reflections on Judaism and Israel

Purim Sameach! See my brief lyrical video for a more poetic rendering of some of the themes written about below – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-_idrCJ8Wk

This Full Moon Festival of Purim, we read the story of Esther/Ishtar/Venus, a book of dramatic inversions that turns the tables on conventional views of women and sexuality.

The story of the Garden of Eden ends with G!d telling Eve/Woman that because of her ‘sin’, man will rule over her (Gen. 3:16).

And so begins the brokenness of our current reality, where relationships are almost universally viewed in terms of power relations and hence as a means to an end. Theists and atheists alike, the ascetic priests of the twin idolatries of organised religion and science, try to tell us that love and pleasure and such other hogwash are merely secondary to the procreation of the species/natural selection. Isn’t it funny how much fundamentalist theists and atheists have in common?! According to both, woman is only a servant of the male, and her life-giving ability is a commodity to be acquired and jealously guarded, rather than trusted or celebrated.

The book of Esther/Venus/Ishtar, a remarkably sophisticated late biblical composition, comes to debunk this view, and to (re)assert that femininity, love and relationship have immense value of their own. Viewing women, relationship and sexuality as a means to an end is exemplified by the deeply insecure, and hence power-obsessed, King Achashverosh, who is proven to be inadequate and self-destructive, and in alliance with the forces of destructive chaos, aka Haman/Amalek.

Achashverosh’s view of women and sexuality is clear from the beginning of the story, where he plays geopolitical power games with his wife’s naked body, and is soon humiliated by Vashti’s refusal to subordinate herself, and her Babylonian ancestry, to his new Persian dynasty, empire and capitol city. When Vashti refuses to dance before his drunken ‘friends’, wearing only her crown, he exiles her and sends a letter to every province of his vast empire, declaring, somewhat ridiculously, that every man should rule authoritatively over the women in his house – his pathetic attempt to reassert the status quo as articulated by G!d in Eden.

Achashverosh is so traumatized by this episode that even some years later he can only contemplate relationship with any woman in the form of rape, and so his aides set to work, kidnapping likely candidates for the dubious honour of being the next queen. Our heroine, Esther is chosen as the king’s favourite companion because she seems to be the most pliable woman ever created – that is, the easiest to rule over, to subdue, to rape not only with the physical act of penetration, but existentially to make her entirely subservient to his whims. The Talmud tells us that she was capable of being both an experienced lover, and a naïve virgin, depending on her partner’s desire. The midrash explains that this is no coincidence – she is so pliable because she was orphaned at birth and has been brought up by her uncle Mordechai who has made her his wife. Given her absolute dependency on him, we cannot help but view their relationship as abusive, meaning that when Esther is made queen, she essentially goes from one relationship of existential rape to another.

As I mention at the end of my video, Esther’s victory of Haman/Amalek is not, on the surface at least, the ideal one of love defeating manipulation – she seems to be just as manipulative as Haman, if not more so! However, whereas the text makes explicit that Haman’s manipulation of the king was driven by hate and greed, hers is quite the opposite, driven by a desire to fulfill her own personal potential by grasping the unique opportunity that has dropped into her lap, to save her family and her people from annihilation.

Esther is therefore an inspiring paradigm for a woman in a broken world of rape, who overcomes enormous abuse to find her own identity, and in doing so learns to use every tool at her disposal to a positive end. She takes her reality and turns it (one of the many dramatic inversions of the story) on its head – whereas she was selected for the king because she seemed to be the most pliant woman imaginable, she in fact turns out to be capable of manipulating him to a tee!

Still, manipulation is not love, and she never achieves this herself. Rather she teaches us that such a relationship must be worked for, even across generations, and her bravery and desire to give of herself for the sake of life and love are in many respects the building blocks for the flourishing of authentic love in the future.

How so?

The Talmud suggests that one reason why we do not say ‘Hallel’ (extra psalms of praise) on Purim is that at the close of the story of Esther, the Jews are still in exile, still subject to the whims of Achashverosh, and of course Esther herself is still trapped as his wife. Whereas the story of Purim closes ambivalently, it is followed, always exactly one month later, by Pesach, which provides us with the very paradigm of complete redemption, and for saying ‘Hallel’ – the Song at the Sea. If Purim is a flash of light in the darkness of oppression and exile, Pesach is being led entirely from darkness into the realm of light. (See R Tsadok HaKohen, Divrei Soferim 32)

From one Full Moon to the next, from Adar to Nisan, we transition from partial redemption to complete redemption. The Pesach story has become the paradigm of liberation not only for Jews but for countless other oppressed peoples worldwide, but, fascinatingly, the ‘megillah’ traditionally read on Pesach is not a politically oriented book, but a shining stream of perhaps the intoxicatingly beautiful love poetry ever written – the Song of Songs (aka the Song of Solomon).

It seems that before we can re-live and bring into our lives the absolute liberation from Egypt, we must first experience something more partial and more ambivalent. And before we can truly relate to the intense love poetry of Solomon, we must acknowledge that to create real love requires patiently working to find one’s own identity and giving selflessly of oneself, like Esther. And for those of you still waiting for the happy ending, it comes, with the festival that Pesach climaxes with – Shavuot (Pentecost/Weeks), when we read the story of Ruth, and discover that healthy, redemptive love is not only possible, but what we were created for. Phew! More on that nearer the time…there are zillions of multi-layered connections between Purim, Pesach and Shavuot I’ll flesh out over the next few weeks to complement what’s above.

Happy Purim, and happy transition into most deep liberation!

Love Daniel

PS If you would like to experience some of the boundless waves of Simchah (profound joy) that Purim offers, simply indulge in any or all of the 4 key mitzvot (connections) of the festival – the more, the merrier!
1. Hear or read the story of Esther.

2. Give gifts to the Poor.

3. Send Gifts (especially food!) to friends.

4. Eat, drink and be merry – The Talmud and Codes of Law instruct us to drink until we can no longer differentiate between “Blessed is Mordechai” and “Cursed is Haman”!

PPS – 1 more afterthought – this is from Rabbi Wikipedia – Esther and Mordechai might well correspond to Ishtar and Marduk, in which case another crucial dimension to the festival which ties in very closely with everything above is that Esther/Ishtar is defeating the forces of winter and bringing the much-needed Spring liberation!

“From the late nineteenth century onwards, several scholars explored the theory that the Book of Esther actually was a myth related to the spring festival of Purim which may have had a mixed West-Semitic/Akkadian/Canaanite origin. According to this interpretation the tale celebrates the triumph of the Babylonian deities Marduk and Ishtar (which seem phonetically similar to the names of the heroes in this book – Esther for Ishtar and Marduk for Mordechai) over the deities of Elam or more likely the renewal of life in the spring and the casting out of the scapegoat of the old year. This interpretation is explored in depth in the works of Theodor Gaster.”