Shock and awe
Past few years, a couple things hit me hard about Megillat Esther. It is perhaps the one Jewish text (other than, maybe, every other Jewish text) in which Jews of all perspectives find at least one things deeply disturbing. For me, it has a lot to do with the outbreak of ethnic conflict and the role of superpowers in war. The Haman-Mordechai dynamic illustrates vividly and simply the ease with which the personal and the political bleed together and the potential for ever-expanding circles of pain to develop from small moments; the textual suggestions that the two are but the latest actors in the historic struggle between Israel/ Benjamin and Amalek/ Agag is only more troubling. Ahashueros, the story's superpower, explodes the situation after he enters it quickly and thoughtlessly based on limited and unsubstantiated information ("There is a certain nation") and strategic (Haman's support) and economic (Haman's bribe) interest. This model is only sustained by the story's sudden reversal - Ahashueros discovers that he has in Esther a strategic/economic (depending on how one reads the - also quite troubling - gender politics of the text) interest in the Jews which trumps his interest in their historic enemies, the Agagites. The original decree - the recourse to slaughter - is, Ahashueros insists, irrevocable. But he can switch sides, backing the Jews in the retalitory slaughter of thousands - and, should there be any ambiguity about what is going on, Esther returns after one day to report on the progress and he easily grants permission to continue the killing.
We live in a world of superpowers, and we live in a narrative tradition of Superpower - and we struggle with how neither to shirk power and the attendant responsibility, nor to fall into the traps of power or fall prey to its seductive potential for abuse.
There are hopeful moments in the story as well - Esther's appeal to Ahashueros itself, the choice of a priviledged person living in a palace to cast her lot in with the oppressed, to stand in solidarity and confront the agent of oppression and refuse to be divided from the suffering, is in many ways a proto-Moses moment (and, if Purim is indeed a parallel to Yom Kippur, that may be the most essential Viddui). And her plea for the decree itself to be revoked, like Esau's piercing question - Why is there only one blessing, father - at the same time puts a bitter point on injustice and points the way towards a better future.
Amalek, we're taught, represents the refusal of teshuvah - the renunciation of reconciliation and redemption. Amalek's fingerprints are all over this story. The classic Rabbinic question about Esther is where is God in this story. God, we're taught, is all over this story, revealed in the redemption even as God's face is concealed. But the Rabbinic answers to the associated question - what is the role of God in this struggle - somehow are much less satisfying. There is another path, one which rejects both Haman and Amalek. But that path seems concealed in this story in a more troubling manner than the presence of God. Or maybe it's the same concealment.
So we're commanded to hear this story, and to drown it out, to remember Amalek and blot out Amalek's memory, to celebrate the victory of good over evil and to get too drunk to tell the difference. And then we wake up hung over, and remain wholly unprepared to grapple with the webs of violence and vengeance with which we're confronted.
T minus nineteen hours.
We live in a world of superpowers, and we live in a narrative tradition of Superpower - and we struggle with how neither to shirk power and the attendant responsibility, nor to fall into the traps of power or fall prey to its seductive potential for abuse.
There are hopeful moments in the story as well - Esther's appeal to Ahashueros itself, the choice of a priviledged person living in a palace to cast her lot in with the oppressed, to stand in solidarity and confront the agent of oppression and refuse to be divided from the suffering, is in many ways a proto-Moses moment (and, if Purim is indeed a parallel to Yom Kippur, that may be the most essential Viddui). And her plea for the decree itself to be revoked, like Esau's piercing question - Why is there only one blessing, father - at the same time puts a bitter point on injustice and points the way towards a better future.
Amalek, we're taught, represents the refusal of teshuvah - the renunciation of reconciliation and redemption. Amalek's fingerprints are all over this story. The classic Rabbinic question about Esther is where is God in this story. God, we're taught, is all over this story, revealed in the redemption even as God's face is concealed. But the Rabbinic answers to the associated question - what is the role of God in this struggle - somehow are much less satisfying. There is another path, one which rejects both Haman and Amalek. But that path seems concealed in this story in a more troubling manner than the presence of God. Or maybe it's the same concealment.
So we're commanded to hear this story, and to drown it out, to remember Amalek and blot out Amalek's memory, to celebrate the victory of good over evil and to get too drunk to tell the difference. And then we wake up hung over, and remain wholly unprepared to grapple with the webs of violence and vengeance with which we're confronted.
T minus nineteen hours.