Esther: A Story of Standing Together

Purim 5781

by Jared Eaton, Simchat Yisrael, West Haven, CT

As the festival of Purim approaches, Jews around the world gather to read the megillah of Esther, a story about a young Jewish girl who becomes the queen of the Persian Empire and uses her position to save the Jewish people from destruction.

Esther has been an inspiring figure in Judaism for centuries. Children dress as her on the festival of Purim and it’s even become traditional to name baby girls born near Purim Esther after the heroine of the story.

But compared to other figures in the Bible, is Esther really a good Jewish role model?

Compare Esther to a similar figure in Jewish history, Daniel. The books of Esther and Daniel both concern how Jews are to live and act in exile, and have heroes who have to navigate through the intrigues and pressures of life in the court of a powerful gentile king.

But from there, the similarities end. Daniel has uncompromising faith and unwavering trust in God. He reacts to exile by holding fast to his values and his Jewish identity. He refuses to eat unclean foods; he refuses to bow down to idols; he refuses to change his prayer life or diminish his service to God. He always tells the truth and is fearless in the face of powerful kings. Daniel never compromises who he is.

Esther isn’t the same kind of role model. She hides her Jewish identity, embraces pagan customs, eats unclean foods, and marries a gentile. Daniel inspires the pagan kings to praise the name of the most-high God to all the people and nations of the earth. Esther is so irreligious that God’s name isn’t even mentioned in the whole book.

When Mordecai comes to her for help, Esther’s first response isn’t courage or faith, it’s self-preservation. She says “Everyone knows that anyone who appears before the king without being invited is doomed to die unless the king holds out his gold scepter. And the king has not called for me to come to him for thirty days” (Esth 4:11). It’s not a good look for someone who is supposed to be a hero and a role-model.

Martin Luther, the leader of the Protestant Reformation, hated the book of Esther so much that he wished for it to be expunged from the scriptures, because it was “filled with heathen unnaturalities.” Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the book of Esther is that when archeologists uncovered the Dead Sea Scrolls from the Qumran caves, they found fragments of every book in the Hebrew scriptures, except for Esther. The book of Esther was not included in the original Hebrew Bible.

So why do we place such emphasis on this book? Why do we read it year after year, telling the story of Esther, Haman, and Mordecai over and over again? Why is Esther such a hero to our people that we celebrate a holiday commemorating her story?

I think the answer lies in the same passage I quoted a moment ago. I believe that Esther found her greatest strength at her moment of greatest weakness.

Filled with rage and envy against the Jews, Haman had convinced the king to issue an edict calling for the death of every Jew in the empire. It was a moment of unprecedented devastation in our nation’s history.

The Jewish people responded by turning to God in hopes of being saved. Throughout the Kingdom, there was great mourning amongst the people. They took to the streets, fasting, weeping, and wailing. Everybody lay in sackcloth and ashes. Everybody that is, except for Esther.

Esther is completely oblivious to everything that is going on around her. She doesn’t even know about the death sentence looming over her people’s heads. She’s sitting pretty inside the palace, insulated from the cares of the world, decked out in royal garments, being pampered by maidens who attend to her every need.

No wonder then that Esther hesitates when Mordecai asks her to put herself on the line. She has everything to lose. A few months ago, Esther was a poor Jewish orphan, from an ostracized minority, with no parents, little education, and few prospects. By extraordinary circumstances, she found herself elevated to an exalted position as queen of all of Persia. She was able to leave the old, impoverished Jewish life behind and embrace her new abundant life as a Persian.

But now her past has caught up to her. She can’t escape the person she used to be, and now she is being asked to own the identity that she worked so hard to escape, knowing that if she does, she could lose everything she has, even her own life.

Esther has a decision to make. She can stay where she is and let the storm pass her by. No one knows that she’s Jewish; she would be safe inside the palace. She could keep living her new, comfortable life.

But instead, Esther responds to the call. With a little help from Mordecai, Esther realizes that her fate is bound to the Jewish people. Whatever her circumstances may be, wherever she lives or whatever she practices, she will always be a Jew, and she cannot abandon her people when they need her the most.

She tells Mordecai to go and gather all of the Jewish people. You have been fasting and praying up until now, well, I am going to fast and pray with you. I won’t remain separate from my people anymore. If I am going to be lost, then let me be lost. But let it be for the right reasons . . . let it be with my people, and for my people, not separate from them.

This is the greatness of Esther. She didn’t have to do what she did. Esther could have remained hidden and safe from harm, but at the most critical moment, she recognized that all Jews are responsible for one another, that we are all deeply connected, and she rejoins her people and changes the destiny of the Jewish people forever.

There’s a powerful lesson for Messianic Jews in this story. Like Esther, sometimes it’s easy for us to become isolated from our people. It’s easy to get caught up in our own insular little community and lose sight of what’s going on in the wider Jewish world. Sometimes we even find it easier to relate to gentiles than to Jews, find that our faith in Messiah Yeshua gives us more in common with the church than with Israel.

But the Hamans of the world have not gone away. The Jewish people still live under the threat of bigotry and antisemitism. Hate speech against the Jews has been on a steady rise.

We, like Esther, have choice to make. We can shut ourselves up in our palace and hope that the storm passes us by. Or we can recognize that we are a part of the Jewish people, that God has called us to bear one another’s burdens, and that we need to stand with our people in good times and bad.

Purim is a celebration of our Jewish identity in a world that continues to hate and fear Jews. In the darkest times in our history, the Jewish people have celebrated Purim to remember how God has never abandoned us and how deeply connected we are to one another.

And no, I don’t think Esther is a poor role model. Martin Luther, raging antisemite that he was, may not have been a big fan of the book, but Moses Maimonides, one of the greatest Jewish minds of all time, said that outside of the five books of the Torah, Esther is the most important book in the Bible. He believed that more than any other text, Esther would instruct the Jewish people how to survive in exile away from the Holy Land.

Esther may not have been included in the original versions of the Hebrew Bible, but from the medieval period on there have been more scrolls of Esther discovered than any other book of the Bible, save the Torah. During the tortured history of European Jewry, this book took on a special meaning to the Jewish people. The book of Esther teaches us that even in the most hopeless situations, God will always deliver.

Wherever the Jews would survive plagues, or floods or famines, they would celebrate Purim to remind them of God’s deliverance. When Judaism was outlawed in Spain during the Inquisition, Jews would secretly celebrate Purim in basements and cellars.

When we read the book of Esther, we join ourselves to a long tradition. A tradition of finding hope and joy in dark times. A tradition of taking a stand against hatred and bigotry. And a tradition of standing together, hand in hand, as one with our people.

Chag Sameach Purim!