The key in the Orthodox Jewish understanding of the book is that Mordechai wanted to circulate it throughout the empire, but he knew it had to get past the King and his censors.
By Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer, INN
To avoid getting into a whole megillah, this brief summary, which includes selections from the midrash, assumes some basic acquaintance with the Biblical Book of Esther (Megillat Esther). The key in the Orthodox Jewish understanding of the book is that Mordechai wanted to circulate it throughout the empire, but he knew it had to get past the King and his censors.
Any offending word or implication in the text not only might condemn the book to be barred, but it might also get him killed by royal decree. Therefore, Mordechai wrote it in a way that much of the narrative is implied “between the lines” but not explicitly stated. The Talmudic traditions therefore fill in the missing parts of the story.
Key points:
The King actually hated Jews. He is the Achashverosh who stopped the Jews from rebuilding the Holy Temple in Jerusalem (Ezra 4:6) after King Cyrus of Persia had permitted its rebuilding. In marking his third year on the throne, the King he held a massive six-month celebration, followed by a ribald seven-day feast. As he got drunk, he and friends started arguing over which province had the most beautiful women.
Somehow, he decided to prove his point that the home-grown were most beautiful by commanding his anti-Jewish wife, Queen Vashti, to present herself in the nude, wearing only her crown. She refused to do so, particularly after being smitten with a full-body rash (a measles-vaccine-denier?), and also sent the King a sharp note that accused him of being a lowly drunk unlike her father, the former king of Babylonia, who could drink heavily and never lose sobriety. The King got furious and, after consulting with his equally sauced friends at the drinking party, ordered her executed.
Three years later the King, now sober, was lonely and wanted a new queen. He conducted a national search. All single women were commanded to present themselves in the capital. Hegai, a royal chamberlain and undoubtedly a eunuch, was in charge of overseeing the tens of thousands of single women arriving, picking out a few dozen or hundreds for the king to “try out” and preparing each finalist for her respective “big night” by having each treated with skin softeners, lotions, perfumes, and cosmetics for a year. All the others were sent home. Those whom Hegai selected each spent one night with the King for a “try-out” in bed.
One would be selected Queen; all other finalists would be condemned for the rest of their lives to the harem overseen by another royal chamberlain eunuch, Shaashgaz, because no man in the kingdom was permitted ever to be intimate with a woman who had been intimate with the King. So it was all-or-nothing if selected by Hegai as a finalist. Esther’s night was in January, which proved miraculously helpful in a Middle Eastern era before air conditioning and indoor plumbing. While a summer’s day and night could be hot, sweaty, causing body odor and make-up to run, a winter night could be better for various reasons.
Esther was chosen Queen but never revealed her ancestry or religion.
The King himself had come from lowly origins and was a boor. He had married the daughter of a former Babylonian king, and she constantly shoved that status difference in his face. There was something enticing for him in now having a wife whose ancestry was possibly even lower than his. She would never throw her lineage in his face as had the previous one, and she was an orphan. No in-laws to deal with, another plus. (An aside: What is the difference between in-laws and out-laws? Answer: Outlaws are Wanted.)
Mordechai the Jew secretly was Esther’s uncle (or cousin, or husband, depending on the rabbinic interpretation). He hung around the palace courtyard, a public square, to keep tabs on Esther.
As a primary religious leader of the Jews, who had been among those exiled from Israel by Babylonia’s King Nebuchadnezzar (Esther 2:6), Mordechai also was fluent in dozens of exotic languages. Two of the King’s chamberlains, Bigtan and Teresh, plotted to assassinate the King because he had shunted them aside after marrying Esther. They plotted out loud, speaking in a language no one there possibly could have known — except for Mordechai. He reported the plot to Esther, who told the King and emphasized that she heard it from Mordechai the Jew.
The report was investigated, confirmed, and the two connivers were hanged. (Note the difference from a Mueller/Adam Schiff investigation: not two years with a hundred indictments of people with nothing to do with anything, but quick, elegant, to the point, and finished.)
The King elevates an aide, Haman, to be vizier. Haman expects everyone who sees him to bow down to him. Mordechai the Jew, a descendant of the tribe of Benjamin, uniquely will not bow down. Among Jews, the tribe of Benjamin had a particular pride that their progenitor was the only son of Jacob who never had bowed down in his life, because all the others had bowed down to Esau. (Gen. 33:2-3)
Haman decided he wanted Mordechai and his people dead. The King already hated the Jews, so acquiesced. A date was set for the mass murders, to be eleven months thence. Weapons from the King’s arsenal would be distributed to Jew-haters throughout the Kingdom. Esther, in her ivory tower, knew nothing of what was going on.
When Mordechai heard the news, he mourned, donned sackcloth and prayed outside the town square. Queen Esther heard from her most trusted aide, who knew her relationship to Mordechai, that Mordechai was publicly mourning for some reason. In messages exchanged back and forth between the Queen and Mordechai via the aide, she learned from Mordechai about the planned mass murder of Jews. She was unsure what to do. He told her to speak to the King and save the Jews. She replied that the King does not see people unless he asks for them, and he executes anyone who disturbs him when not summoned unless, upon seeing them, he is amused and signals by raising his gold scepter that the person should not be slaughtered.
Since the King had not asked to see her for thirty days, Esther sent word to Mordechai that it would be suicide for her to go to the King on her own initiative. He replied by messenger that G-d arranges life developments for reasons, and maybe this moment of peril is the reason for which she miraculously was chosen to be Queen; moreover, if she does not stand up now for her people, she will be the one who ends up dead, and G-d will just have to send another person miraculously to save the Jews.
Chastened, she agrees to risk her life but asks that Mordechai first order the entire Jewish population to fast and pray for her for three days, into the first day of Passover, the day that the Jews were freed from Egyptian bondage. The public three-day fast ensues, and she risks all. The King sees her at the doorway, is amused, and raises his gold scepter, welcoming her and asking what she wants.
Esther does not blurt out the situation. Instead, her strategy is to convince the King that, with him not paying attention to her these past thirty days and more, Haman has been taking a fancy to her, and maybe something now is going on between them. Maybe not. So she invites the King to a private feast with lots of wine — his favorite food supplement — and it will be special and intimate: only the King and her. Just the two of them. And also Haman.
At the feast, the King asks Esther whether she would like anything special, and she answers that all she desires is that the King come to another party like today’s — again romantic, intimate, and only the King and she. And Haman.
That night the King cannot sleep. It is driving him nuts: “What’s with Esther and Haman? Are they going to kill me tomorrow when I am drunk at the party, sort of like in Hamlet?” He can’t sleep, so he asks to be entertained in an era before television and internet by having one of his aides read from his diary, the chronicles of his reign. The reader opens the book randomly to the section relating how Mordechai the Jew had saved the King’s life by reporting the assassination plot. The King contemplates that he has assassins all over the place — Bigtan and Teresh then, perhaps Haman and Esther now — but then he was saved by a friendly informant.
Why no informant now? It hits him: “Did I ever reward Mordechai for saving my life? If not, maybe that is the reason people do not stick out their necks to warn me.” He asks the guy reading the diary, and the guy says that Mordechai never was rewarded.
As this exchange ensues, Haman shows up in the King’s courtyard in the middle of the night to ask permission to hang Mordechai the Jew on a gallows he just erected for him in his backyard. The King, wondering whether this maybe-assassin was there at midnight to kill him before tomorrow’s party, is flustered and asks Haman, hoping also to delay any assassination now by implying that the King has big things planned for Haman: “Look, let’s say there is one guy in the kingdom I want to honor extra-special, how would I do it?” Haman, assuming the King means him (and having no idea that the King thinks he wants to kill him), suggests a massive parade on which the King’s favorite guy can wear robes the King has worn and can ride on a horse the King has ridden.
The king says “Great idea! Do all that for Mordechai the Jew, and you lead his entourage.” Haman cannot figure it out but realizes this is not the time to ask permission to hang Mordechai. At the next day’s parade, the retinue passes by Haman’s home, where his daughter on the balcony assumes that Dad is on the horse and that Mordechai is on the ground, leading the way. She spills the contents of her chamber pot onto the head of the guy in front of the horse. When she learns it was her father she shamed, she jumps in anguish to her death.
At the next day’s wine feast, when the King is sauced, Esther reveals for the first time that she is a Jew, and she tells the King that Haman is the enemy of all that is good and plans to kill her and all her people. Haman is shocked that she is a Jew and realizes he is in big trouble. Haman starts begging Esther to understand that it all is a misunderstanding, and he starts shaking uncontrollably.
The King, who regularly orders people executed when he gets angry while drunk, steps outside for a moment to make sense of what is going on: “So she is not plotting with Haman to kill me? Haman is plotting to kill her? She is a damned Jew? But I like her. So what does that mean, that I like Jews? And that means that the guy who saved me from the assassination also was a Jew? So I like two Jews? But I don’t like Jews, and they know it, so why do they like me?”
As he walks back in, Haman — who was shaking uncontrollably — has slipped (or been pushed by a Divinely dispatched Angel) onto Esther’s couch, landing on her accidentally. The King sees this through his drunk stupor and cannot figure out whether Haman is trying to kiss her or rape her or strangle her — all of which are unacceptable. At this moment, as he thunders at Haman “You’re going to overcome the Queen with me in the palace?” the King’s attendant, Charvonah, tells him: “And by the way, this same Haman has erected a gallows in his backyard to hang Mordechai who saved your life.” The King blurts out: “So hang Haman on it instead!” They hang Haman.
The King transfers Haman’s estate to Esther and Mordechai. He authorizes the Jews to kill all their enemies. With two royal decrees now on the record — (i) the earlier one authorizing the Jew-haters to kill the Jews, including women and kids, and to take all the spoils, and (ii) the other identical decree authorizing the Jews to kill the Jew-haters, including women and kids, and to take all their spoils — the local government officials have to figure out which pogrom to support and which to suppress. As they learn that Mordechai now is paraded publicly as the King’s vizier (8:15), while Haman is hanged, they support the latter decree while suppressing the former.
The Jews kill their armed enemies but not women or children (9:6,15-16), and they do not take any spoils.
In recording the hanging of the ten sons of Haman (9:10), who are among the Jew-haters killed, the traditional Hebrew writing in the parchment scroll records certain letters in certain of their names in smaller font (9:7,9). No one has known why for centuries. The smaller letters — tav, shin, and zayin— also represent numbers aggregating to 707 and is the way that the Hebrew Calendar Year 5707 (corresponding to October 1946-September 1947) is written. As it just-so-happens, on October 16, 1946, ten former Nazis were hanged for war crimes by order of the Nuremberg trials. Among his last words upon being hanged, the Nazi Julius Streicher curiously shouted out “Purim Fest 1946!”
Purim particularly commemorates that, even when miracles are not overt, G-d watches over and peforms miracles. One just has to look more closely, with “Night Goggles of Faith,” to see them.
The writer is adjunct professor of law at two prominent Southern California law schools, Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, congregational rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California, and has held prominent leadership roles in several national rabbinic and other Jewish organizations. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and served for most of the past decade on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. His writings have appeared in The Weekly Standard, National Review, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, American Thinker, Frontpage Magazine, and Israel National News. Other writings are collected at www.rabbidov.com .
@ yamit82:
In my post whch should be just above but which h
has vanished into the bowels of this machine, from where TED will shortly retrieve it, I meant to add the following…
Concerning the pain relievers etc that you extol as being a fulfillment of the Torah etc. I think you slipped up there. ..The Torah says….”In pain shalt thou bring forth children…”…
That is- according to my recollection of Bereshit during my chaidar days.
@ yamit82:
Far too voluminous to respond fully to.
But if slavery is abolished, go and tell the Saudis…..Also the sex slavers, the child sex procurers. and the pedoph.le pornographers. the drug lords. etc.
And .t’s nce to know that 40% of US billionaires are Jews. I wonder how many of them married shiksas…?? And they’ve never given me anything yet. I ‘m not holding my breath. And I wonder what Universities they’ve endowed Not Israeli ones I’d bet. And what charities they give to ….mostly goyisher ones and not Jewish I’d bet.
But it’s wonderful to know. I can dream that we are related ….back about 1000 years ago somewhere our forebears were siblings….
Why did you need to descend to the mishugas of Kaballah…?
You’re so good with numbers… can you give me the numbers on the next big lottery winning ticket..
Jewish influence is at its peak worldwide. About 40 percent of American billionaires are Jewish. Their influence has peaked, as Jewish moguls increasingly dissociate themselves from their Jewishness.
Nations have turned to Jewish values. Almost the entire civilized world considers itself monotheistic. Quite every cultured person envisages God in abstract terms rather than as an anthropomorphic deity. Republican democracy, the preferred social order around the world, is laid out in the Torah: You shall not follow the majority to evil; presumably, you must follow them to what the Torah considers good. Animal rights groups promulgate rabbinical notions of minimal suffering during slaughter. Slavery, harshly curtailed in the Torah, is abolished. Enemies are treated with moderation and a sense of justice.
As the sources put the messianic era at 210 years—or at any rate, a very long period—the Messiah seems to be a collective image. Sages, indeed, understood the messianic Isaiah 53 chapter as referring to Israel collectively. So we don’t need to imagine an unsavory Jew such as Ben Gurion as a messiah. In every recent generation, we have had a dead militant Messiah from the house of Joseph: Meir Kahane, Avraham Stern.
God never performs clear-cut miracles. The parting of the Reed Sea evidently left a good number of Jews unconvinced, as they soon complained of the lack of food and water. Indeed, that miracle looked like anything but a miracle: the eastward wind, blowing all night, pushed shallow waters from the reed swamp and made it crossable on foot, while still impassible for the Egyptian heavy chariots, which, the Torah says, were stuck in the mud and lost their wheels. The Purim miracles were even more sublime: of his entire harem, the Persian despot became madly attracted to his old Jewish wife—who surely looked sorrowful after a three-day fast—and followed her whims. The Israeli victories in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 can be logically explained by peculiar military circumstances. After all, even a coin thrown up into the air can land on its edge. But after Yitzhak Shamir agreed to the Madrid Conference, which was the beginning of the giveaway of Judea to the Arabs, thirty-nine SCUD missiles hit Israel—the maximum number of lashes under the Torah’s law. Like under lashes, no one died from the Iraqi missiles.
The Torah tells us to exterminate Amalek, but to evict the Canaanite nations—not kill them. God even promised to plant terror in their hearts so that they would flee from us. In 1948, 400,000 Palestinian Arabs took off from their land and fled the country for no rational reason.
The prophetic vision has exploded. Prophets were rare in biblical times—hardly two dozen in a thousand years—but recently the prophecy surged. There are a lot of credible accounts of prominent rabbis predicting the realized events. Some great ones predicted remote events, such as when Rabbi Nahman of Uman refused to conduct marriage ceremonies because the generation a hundred years from him would be better not born; that generation perished in Ukrainian pogroms and in the Holocaust. Rav Kaduri, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Bava Salia, and less prominent rabbis established their prophetic abilities beyond doubt.
Our times saw Cain’s curses being lifted. Anesthesia and advanced medical procedures help alleviate women’s pain during childbirth. Advances in agriculture mean that men no longer need to toil to the point of exhaustion for their sustenance. Health improvements have increased everyone’s life expectancy, and stem cells theoretically offer an almost unlimited life span.
History has always shamed those who predicted its end, and in no century was there a shortage of doomsayers. I’m not eager to join their ridiculed ranks, but there are some arguments beyond the claims of the Mayan calendar watchers that time runs faster now as the end of our cycle draws near. Even Rambam, though he quoted the Talmudic curse on those who calculate the end of times, offered his own estimate, which is now long expired.
God offered a forty-day grace period to Nineveh, and forty years to Judea after Israel was destroyed. Nineveh repented and survived, but Judea didn’t and perished. In current Israel, Jews first rebelled against the divine will in 1967 when we failed to annex the land of Judea which God delivered into our hands miraculously. God slapped us with the Yom Kippur war and saved us in it. Then we sinned irreparably by giving away Sinai, the Promised Land. Did 1978 start a forty-year countdown?
Deuteronomy 11:17 promises that God will close the heavens and there will be no rain if Jews refuse to heed his commandments – and indeed we have an unprecedented drought for six years now.
There is a place in Esther 9 where, very unusually, four Hebrew letters are of non-standard size. The sages have long maintained that this is a prophecy. The four letters make the number 5-707, which is the Hebrew equivalent to the Gregorian year 1946-1947. That year ten Nazis were hanged in Nuremberg, and the transvestite Goring committed suicide. In Esther, Haman’s ten sons are hanged, and his daughter committed suicide, according to a midrash. To drive the point home to Jews, one of the Nazis, whose name does not deserve to be mentioned, screamed “The Purim 1946” at the gallows. In Esther 3, eleven months passed from the king’s order for the extermination of the Jews to their salvation; eleven years passed from the 1935 Nuremberg laws to the 1946 Nuremberg trials. In 1953, Stalin died during or just before Purim, days before the planned date that all Soviet Jews would be wiped out by transferring them to the coldest place in Siberia.
There are other strange correlations, including the number of Jews killed fighting for Jerusalem in 1967, the number of years between independence and capturing the Temple Mount (same as for King Jehoiakim), and many others. Every such oddity can be explained rationally—it is a matter of Jewish belief that God performs miracles without violating the laws of nature—but there are just too many coincidences.
But he never got ta eat our Bloomies hamantaschen!
Haman today is alive and well? still living in persia.