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March 12, 1999/24 Adar 5759, Vol. 51, No. 24
Look behind the mask
RABBI SHLOMO RISKIN
Purim/Book of Esther
What does Judaism, with its emphasis on "You shall be holy," have to do with a masquerade ball and the ambience that characterizes the celebration of Purim?
According to the sage Rava, "A person is required to drink on Purim until he can no longer distinguish between cursing Haman and blessing Mordecai." According to Rav Moshe Isserles (RavMah), a 16th century legal authority, women must dress as men and men as women on Purim day. Opposites become confused and interchanged. What appears to be a blatant lie may in fact be a fundamental truth.
The major personalities in the Scroll of Esther, the text we read on Purim, are not what they seem to be. Ahasuerus is ostensibly one of the most powerful men on the planet. Yet one individual, a woman - his wife, no less - refuses his command to show off her beauty at a lavish public banquet: "Queen Vashti refused to come at the king's command" (Esther 1:12).
This domestic quarrel turns into a national crisis when Ahasuerus' ministers decide that her disobedience sets a dangerous precedent for the women of the kingdom, and they want to see her independent spirit crushed. So Ahasuerus heeds not only to Vashti, but also to his ministers, apparently sending Vashti to her death, a decision he regrets once when his wine-soaked eyes face a new day.
Ahasuerus' impotence is revealed at the end of the Megillah scroll as well, when he is unable to revoke Haman's decree to murder the Jews of his kingdom. At best, he can only grant the Jews the right of self-defense. This seemingly omnipotent royal despot is in truth a weak figurehead.
Early in the Megillah text, Haman is depicted as a courtier on the fast track to glory, pushing aside with cruel disdain whoever stands in his way. When Mordecai the Jew refuses to bow down to him, Haman declares he will destroy this recalcitrant subject and his entire ethnic tribe - all of the Jews.
Haman then is invited by Queen Esther to join her and the king at a private dinner party. So certain is Haman of his royal favor that when the king asks him how he might honor a deserving individual, he is certain that the king means him. But he overplays his hand, suggesting not only that the king give the honoree his royal garb and set him on his royal steed, but also that he place on his head the royal crown. With these words, Haman is playing right into Esther's hands, his swelled pride having reached the bursting point.
Haman's dinner invitation has been a set-up for his imminent fall, meticulously planned by the brilliant strategist Esther. While it may appear that Esther is honoring Haman, in reality she is causing Ahasuerus to suspect his minister of an adulterous liaison. The tree from which he - and we, the readers - thought that Mordecai would hang becomes the gallows for Haman himself.
Esther and Mordecai also ultimately play different roles in the drama than the beginning suggests. Esther may be taken to the king's beauty contest - but she doesn't go kicking and screaming. Could Mordecai and Esther be garnering prestige and power within the royal court at the expense of their Jewish commitment? After all, a Jewish woman is religiously enjoined to give up her life before she may publicly live with a gentile.
The truth is revealed when Mordecai explains to Esther: "Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king's palace. ... If you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father's house will perish" (Esther 4:13-14). Esther, of course, does choose to put her life on the line, becoming a supreme heroine of Jewish history. And God, whose name does not appear in the Book of Esther, remains the invisible power behind the story of Purim.
Purim teaches us not to judge a Haman by his brow, an Ahasuerus by his sword, or an Esther by the jewels in her Persian crown. Wait, and the invisible lines between and beneath the text of life itself will surface.
The holiday of Purim, and the story of Esther, teach us that we must look beneath the surface in order to truly perceive reality.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is the spiritual leader of the Jewish community in Efrat, Israel.
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