Megillah 15

Daf Ditty Megillah 15: Esther’s plight
The verse states:
.‫ֵ◌ֵאת ִדְּב ֵֵרי ֶאְסֵֵוֹר‬,‫בי ַוַיּ ִִגּידוּ ְלָמ ְרֳָדָּכי‬ 12 And they told to Mordecai Esther's words.
Esther 4:12
“And they told Esther’s words to Mordecai” but he, Hathach himself, did not go to tell him
directly. The Gemara explains: From here we see that one does not bring back a sad report. If
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one has nothing positive to say, it is best for him to remain silent. This explains why Hathach
himself did not report the information to Mordecai, and Esther’s words had to be delivered by
other messengers.
Esther sent a message to Mordecai:
‫ַה ְיּה ִוִּדים ַהִסְּמְִצִאים‬-‫ָכּל‬-ָ‫ ְְכּנבֿסֶ◌ֶאת‬Z‫זט ֵ◌ֵל‬ 16 'Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in
‫ ְִוְֹשׁוֹוּ‬-‫וְֹֹאְכוּל ְו ַַאל‬-‫◌ְ ְוצוּמוּ ָﬠ ַַלי ְו ַַאל‬,‫ְבּשָׁוָּשׁן‬ Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink
, ‫ֲאִ ִני ְוַנֲﬠַֹרַתי‬-‫ַגּם‬-ַ-‫ֶֶשׁת ָי ִִמים ַל ְָיָלהָ◌ָויבֿם‬h‫ְְשׁ‬ three days, night or day; I also and my maidens will fast
‫ ֲֶאֶשׁר‬,Z‫ַהֶמֶּל‬-‫ָָאצוּםֵ◌ֵכּן; וְּב ֵֵכןָ◌ָאבבֿאֶ◌ֶאל‬ in like manner; and so will I go in unto the king, which is
-‫ֹא‬l not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish.'
.‫ ָאָבְִד ִוֹי‬,‫ ְוַכֲֶאֶשׁר ָאַבְִד ִוֹי‬,‫ַ◌ַָכָדּת‬
Esther 4:16
“Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me, and neither eat
nor drink for three days, night and day; I also and my maidens will fast likewise, and so will I
go in to the king, not according to the custom” Rabbi Abba said: It will not be according to
my usual custom, for every day until now when I submitted myself to Ahasuerus it was under
compulsion, but now I will be submitting myself to him of my own free will. And Esther further
said: “And if I perish, I perish” What she meant was: Just as I was lost to my father’s house
ever since I was brought here, so too, shall I be lost to you, for after voluntarily having relations
with Ahasuerus, I shall be forever forbidden to you.
Steinzaltz
RASHI
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‫ת ופ ס ות ד " ה‬
‫ם ש כ ית ד ב א ש ת יב מ א ב א ך כ ית ד ב א ך מ מ‬
Tosfos explains why he did not divorce her

‫או"ת יאמא אל היה השרגמ אהתו תרתומ הנריזחהל‬
Why didn't he divorce her, and then she would be permitted to return to Mordechai (after willingly
going to Achashverosh)?
.‫י"ל יפל לכש השעמ טגה אוה ע"פ םידע היהו ארי ןפ םסרפתי רבדה תוכלמל‬
Everything about a Get requires witnesses. Mordechai feared lest the matter become known to the
king.
RASHBA
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The Rashba holds that a Get in the husband's handwriting is Kosher without witnesses. He asked
Tosfos' question, and answered that we need not resolve the Halachah with Agada. We can explain
the verse to mean that she was prepared to die.
The verse
states:
‫ ַוַוֹ ֹ ֲעֹמד‬,‫ ַו ִוְֹל ַַבּשׁ ֶאְסֵֵוֹר ְַמְלכוּת‬,‫א ַו ְִיִהיַ◌ַבּיּבֿם ַהְשּׁ◌ִל ִיִשׁי‬

‫; ְוַהֶמֶּל‬Z‫ ַֹנַכחֵ◌ֵבּית ַהֶמֶּל‬,‫ ַהְצּ ִנ ִיִמית‬Z‫ַהֶמֶּל‬-‫ַבֲּח ַַצרֵ◌ֵבּית‬
‫יֵבֵֿשׁב‬Z
.‫ ֶצּ ַַתח ַהִָבּ ִית‬,‫ ַֹנַכח‬,‫ ְבּ ֵֵבית ַהְַמְּלכוּת‬,‫ִכּ ֵֵףּא ְַמְלכוּתבֿ‬-‫ַ◌ַﬠל‬
1 Now it came to pass on the third day, that
Esther put on her royal apparel, and stood in
the inner court of the king's house, over
against the king's house; and the king sat upon
his royal throne in the royal house, over
against the entrance of the house.
Esther 5:1
“And it came to pass on the third day, that Esther clothed herself in royalty”
The Gemara asks: It should have said: Esther clothed herself in royal garments. Rabbi Elazar
said that Rabbi Ḥanina said: This teaches that she clothed herself with a divine spirit of
inspiration, as it is written here: “And she clothed herself,” and it is written elsewhere:
‫שׂי ֹרֹאשׁ‬ ַ ַ ‫ֲﬠָמ‬-‫ ◌ ֶ ֶאת‬,‫טי ְורַוַּח ָל ְ ָבָשׁה‬ 19 Then the spirit clothed Amasai, who was chief of the
‫ ִָד ִויד‬k‫◌ ְ ְל‬,(‫השלושים )ַהָשּׁ◌ִל ִיִשׁים‬ captains: Thine are we, David, and on thy side, thou
‫◌ ָ ָשׁלבֿם◌ ָ ָשׁלבֿם◌ ְ ְל‬,‫ ִי ַַשׁי‬-‫ֶבן‬k ֶ ‫ְוְִﬠְמּ‬ son of Jesse; peace, peace be unto thee, and peace be to
;k‫ֶהי‬s‫ ֱא‬k‫ִכּי ֲﬠָז ְר‬k ‫ ְָוָשׁלבֿם ְלֹע ְ ֶז ֶר‬k thy helpers; for thy God helpeth thee. Then David
{‫ }פ‬.‫ ַו ִיּ ְוֵֹנם ְבּ ָרֵאֵשׁי ְַהְגּדוּד‬,‫ַו ְיַקְבֵּלם ָדּ ִויד‬ received them, and made them captains of the band.
{P}
I Chron 12:19
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“And the spirit clothed Amasai” Just as there the reference is to the spirit of divine inspiration,
so too here, the term royalty is referring to the spirit of divine inspiration.
Summary1
Rav and Shmuel explain what Mordecai cried out when he revealed Haman’s plot. According to
Rav, Mordecai cried out that Haman’s plan had gone beyond anything that Ahashverosh had
planned. This cry seems to be a political ploy by Haman to rouse the non-Jews against Haman. It
also may have been meant to rouse Ahashverosh himself against Haman.
Shmuel provides a more theological explanation. First of all, we should note that Shmuel speaks
euphemistically. The upper king is God and the lower king is Haman. What he means is that Haman
has prevailed over God but this is such a terrible sentence to write, that he writes the opposite.
The simple meaning of the verb “vatithalhal” is that Esther was afraid. However, the rabbis
understood it based on the word for empty space—halal. Rav said blood flowed out of her because
she began to menstruate. R. Jeremiah says that she needed to go to bathroom.
The rabbis love to conflate characters in the Bible. Thus “Hatach” is not just any one of the kings’
servants. He is none other than Daniel. Rav and Shmuel then offer two puns on his name,
explaining why Daniel was called Hatach.
Isaac interprets Esther’s inquiry as a question whether Israel was being punished by God for their
sins and transgressions of the Torah. This might be necessary to influence her decision as to how
to save the Jews. If it was their own deeds, then they need to do begin by doing teshuvah.
Hatach (Daniel) himself did not go back to Mordecai to tell him that Esther refused to go in front
of the king—he sent others. This teaches that a messenger is not obligated to return to the one who
sent him with a negative answer.
Esther says that she is going in front of the king “not according to the custom.” R. Abba interprets
this to mean that up until now, she only came in front of the king when called. She had no choice;
she was compelled to lie with him. Now, she was making a choice to go to him willingly, and she
may again have to lie with him. As we shall see, this will impact her relationship with Mordecai.
When Esther was sleeping with Ahashverosh out of compulsion, she was not forbidden to
Mordecai her husband. But if she now goes to Ahashverosh willingly, and he sleeps with her, she
will be prohibited to Mordecai because she is an adulteress.
1
https://www.sefaria.org/Megillah.15a.14?lang=bi&p2=Daf_Shevui_to_Megillah.15a.9&lang2=bi
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The verse says that Mordecai “passed” before declaring a three day fast, as Esther had directed
him. The word “passed” is unclear. According to Rav, Mordecai “passed over” Passover, by
making the first day of the holiday one of the days of fasting.
Shmuel says that there must have been a stream that he crossed over on that day.
This statement already appeared above on 14b. Esther didn’t put on “royal clothes” rather she
began to act as a prophet by being clothed by “the holy spirit.”
This now opens a chain of statements made by R. Elazar in the name of R. Hanina.
Rabbi Avrohom Adler writes:2
Lineage
The Gemora returns to the list of prophets that descended from Rachav, saying that we see from
verses that four of them (Baruch, Seraya, Yirmiya and Chanamel) were prophets, but, the Gemora
asks: Where do we see that their fathers were also prophets? The Gemora answers that we know it
from Ulla's statement that if a prophet is mentioned with his father's name, we know that his father
was also a prophet, but if his father's name is omitted, we know that his father wasn't a prophet.
Similarly, if his city is mentioned, he was born there, but if no city is mentioned, he was born in
Yerushalayim. The Gemora cites a similar braisa which says that if the verse mentions someone
with his father's name, and we only know that one of them was praiseworthy, we know that the
other was also praiseworthy. Therefore, the verse, which refers to the prophet Tzefania as the son
of Kushi, the son of Gedalia, teaches that all of them were righteous. Similarly, if the verse states
that one of them was disgraceful, we know that the other was also disgraceful, as in the case of
Yishmael, the son of Nesania, the son of Elishama, who assassinated Gedalia.
Malachi
Rav Nachman says that Malachi is Mordechai, but the verse refers to him as Malachi – my
messenger, since he was second to the king. The Gemora rejects this from a braisa which lists those
who prophesied in the second year of Daryavesh (Baruch ben Neria, Seraya ben Maaseya, Daniel,
Mordechai, Bilshan, Chagai, Zecharia, and Malachi), counting Mordechai and Malachi separately.
The Gemora cites a braisa in which Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karchah says that Malachi is Ezra, while
the Sages say he was a different person named Malachi. Rav Nachman says that it is understandable
that he was Ezra, since Malachi's prophesy includes a verse castigating the Jews for marrying non-
Jews, which was a topic that Ezra spoke to the Jews about at length.
2
http://dafnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Megillah_15.pdf
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Beautiful women
The Gemora cites a braisa which lists four beautiful women in history: Sara, Rachav, Avigail, and
Esther. According to the opinion that says that Esther was greenish, the fourth is Vashti.
The Gemora cites a braisa which says that the temptation of Rachav was even her name; that of
Yael was her voice; that of Avigail was the mere mention of her; and that of Michal the daughter
of Shaul was seeing her. Rabbi Yitzchak says that anyone who says Rachav's name twice
immediately has a nocturnal emission. Rav Nachman challenged this, as he can say it, and it has
no effect, but Rav Yitzchak explained that this was true only of someone who knows of her.
Megillah verses
The Gemora continues explaining verses from the Megillah.
Mordechai knew all of what transpired, and he went outside and cried out a large and bitter cry.
Rav says that he cried out that Haman has ascended above Achashverosh, while Shmuel says that
he cried out that the lower king has ascended above the upper king.
The queen trembled a lot.
Rav says that this means she menstruated from the shock, while Rabbi Yirmiyah says that she had
to relieve herself from the shock.
Esther called Hasach to inquire into Mordechai's behavior.
Rav says that Hasach was Daniel, and he was called Hasach since they cut him down (chasach)
from his high position, while Shmuel says that it was because all the royal activities were carried
out (nechtachim) on his orders.
To know mah zeh - what this is, and al ma zeh - for what this is. Rabbi Yitzchak says that she asked
Mordechai if the Jews transgressed the five books of the Torah, which the verse says mizeh umizeh
– from this [side] and this side [of the tablets] they are written.
And they told Mordechai Esther's words.
The Gemora notes that this implies that Hasach was not the one who relayed this response, teaching
us that one should not pass on a negative answer.
Go gather all the Jews in Shushan...and I will go to the king unlike the practice.
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Rabbi Abba says that this means that Esther's going to the king was to be unlike the former practice,
in which she was coerced, since she was now voluntarily going. Therefore, she said “As I have
been lost, I will be lost,” since just as she had been lost to her father's household, she now would
be lost to her husband Mordechai, since she will now be prohibited to him due to her voluntary
relations with Achashverosh.
And Mordechai passed.
Rav says this means that he passed the first day of Pesach in fasting, while Shmuel says that he
passed over a river to gather all the Jews.
And on the third day, Esther dressed in royalty.
The Gemora says that it should seemingly have said she wore royal clothing, but Rabbi Elozar
quotes Rabbi Chanina who explains that it means she was adorned with divine spirit, as the verse
also refers to Amasai's being clothed with the divine spirit.
The Gemora cites other statements of Rabbi Elozar in Rabbi Chanina's name: One should not take
a simple person's blessing lightly, as both David and Daniel had such simple blessings fulfilled.
David was blessed by Aravna that Hashem should accept him, and Daryavesh blessed Daniel that
Hashem should protect him from the lions, and both were fulfilled. One shouldn't take a simple
person's curse lightly, as Avimelech told Sarah that the gift he gave will be for her kesus ainayim
– a covering for the eyes, and subsequently Yitzchak went blind.
How great is Hashem in contrast to humans? A human first puts a pot on the fire, and then fills it
with water, but Hashem does the opposite, as He first placed the water in the sky and then gathered
the clouds to receive it. Anyone who properly cites the source of a statement brings redemption,
as we see that Esther's proper attribution of the assassination plot that Mordechai reported enabled
the redemption of the Jews from Haman's plans.
When a righteous person departs the world, his generation feels the loss, similar to a lost pearl,
which hasn't changed, but causes its owner distress. The Gemora continues to explain verses. And
all of this is worthless to me when I see Mordechai sitting. Rabbi Elozar asked in the name of
Rabbi Chanina: Why would Haman say this?
The Gemora answers, based on Rav Chisda, who said that Mordechai came from a position of
wealth, and Haman from a position of poverty, as Haman had sold himself to Mordechai for food,
and he was called the slave who was sold for bread. Haman had all his riches etched on his heart,
and when he saw Mordechai, he said that all of this that he had was truly worthless, since he was
Mordechai's slave. Rabbi Elozar said in Rabbi Chanina's name that in the future, Hashem will be
a crown on the head of each righteous person.
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This is based on the verse which the Gemora explains in detail: On that day, Hashem will be as a
crown of tzvi and a tzfira of glory: for those who do tzivyono – His will and those who are
metzapim – hope for His glory. To the remnant of His nation: to those who consider themselves
the remnants by being humble. And for a spirit of judgment: those who judge their evil inclination.
And for those who sit in judgment: one who judges truthfully. And for courage: those who
overcome their evil inclination. [for] those who bring battle: those who battle in the give and take
of Torah. to the gate: the Torah scholars who are in the shuls and batai midrash early in the morning
and late at night. The next verse is the challenge of the attribute of justice, which notes that these
(i.e., the Jews) also strayed after wine and drunkenness, and should be judged to Gehinom.
The Gemora returns to the verses in the Megillah.
And she stood in the inner courtyard of the king
Rabbi Levi says that when she reached the location of idols, the divine presence left her. Esther
then called out to Hashem, asking why He left her. Although she was going to the king, it was not
fully of her own accord, but under duress of the circumstances. In case she had erred when she
referred to Achashverosh as a dog, she now asked Hashem to save her from the lion, Achashverosh.
And when the king saw Esther...
Rabbi Yochanan says that three angels appeared: one who raised her neck, one placed grace on
her, and one extended the king's scepter. The Gemora asks how far the scepter extended, and gives
varying numbers. Rabbi Yirmiyah says it was 2 amos, and it extended 12 amos (or 16, or 24). A
braisa says it extended 60 amos, similar to the arm of Pharaoh's daughter, and the teeth of the
wicked, which both grew in size. Rabbah bar Ufran cited Rabbi Elozar saying it extended 200
amos.
And the king said to Esther what is your request, up to half the kingdom..
The Gemora infers that he was offering half the kingdom, but not all of it, and not something that
would touches on the kingdom itself, I.e.., rebuilding the Bais Hamikdash.
The king and Haman should come today to the feast.
The Gemora cites a braisa with reasons that Esther invited Haman:
1. This was a trap, as the verse says that the table of the wicked will be a trap for them (Rabbi
Eliezer).
2. She learned from the verse which counsels that if your enemy if hungry, feed him (Rabbi
Yehoshua).
3. To show him his prestigious position, and thereby dissuade him from plotting an assassination
of Achashverosh (Rabbi Meir).
4. To remove any suspicion that she was Jewish (Rabbi Yehuda).
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5. To ensure the Jews didn't become complacent by relying on her, and not fully repent (Rabbi
Nechemia).
6. To keep him around her, on the chance that she can trip him up in the presence of the king
(Rabbi Yossi).
7. To show Hashem how low the Jews' position was, and prompt a miracle (Rabbi Shimon ben
Menasia).
8. To make it look like she was close to Haman, prompting Achashverosh to kill both of them
(Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karchah).
9. To make sure that any punishment the king may decide for Haman be carried out immediately,
as Achashverosh often would act impetuously and then change his mind. (Rabban Gamliel).
10. Rabban Gamliel says we need Rabbi Elozar Hamoda'i's explanation that by inviting him,
she incurred on him the jealousy of the king and of his peers.
Rabbah says that she wanted to fulfill with Haman the verse that states that before the fall, comes
the high position. Abaye and Rava say that she wanted to fulfill the verse which states that when
the wicked are burning with drink, Hashem will intoxicate them with death. Rabbah bar Avuha
found Eliyahu hanavi and asked him what Esther’s rationale was. He answered that it was all of
the rationales given by the tannaim and amoraim.
And Haman told them the honor of his wealth, and rov banav – the multitude of his sons.
The Gemora asks how many sons he had. Rav says he had 30, of whom 10 died, 10 were hanged,
and 10 were reduced to begging. The Sages say there were 70 left begging, as the verse says that
svai'im – those who were satiated had be hired, which can be read as shivim – 70. Rami bar Aba
says there were 208 sons, as indicated by the numerical value of v'rov (which is written without a
middle vav).
On that night, the king couldn't sleep
Rabbi Tanchum says that this refers to Hashem, the king of the universe. The Sages say that the
upper beings (i.e., angels) kept the lower ruler (Achashverosh) from sleeping, as they continually
scared him from sleeping. Rava says that it means that Achashverosh couldn't sleep, as he was
concerned that Haman and Esther were plotting to kill him. When he reasoned that someone would
have revealed the plot to him, he was concerned that he may not have repaid a favor, and therefore
people were hiding the plot from him, and he therefore asked for the chronicle book to be brought
and read.
And they were read.
The Gemora says that this expression teaches that they were read by themselves.
And it was found written.
Since the verse says “written” and not “writing”, we learn that the king's scribe, Shimshi, erased
the story, but Gavriel came and wrote it again. Rabbi Asi quoted Rabbi Shila from Tmarta saying
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that if a worldly writing of our merits cannot be erased, certainly the heavenly writing of our merits
cannot be erased.
SAYING OVER IN THE NAME OF THE ONE WHO SAID IT
Rabbi Elozar said in the name of Rabbi Chanina: Whoever says a statement in the name of the one
who said it will bring redemption to the world. Proof to this is cited from the verse in Megillah
[2:22]: The matter became known to Mordechai and he informed Queen Esther. Esther then
informed the king of it in Mordechai's name. The Gemora is always careful in regard to saying
statements in the name of the one who said it initially; why didn’t the redemption come already?
The sefer Ohr Lashamayim cites from the Rebbe from Lublin that the Gemora is not referring to
the ultimate redemption; rather it is referring to each person’s individual success. Similarly, the
blessing of Goel Yisroel in Shemoneh Esrei is referring to the redemption of the individual
communities and not for the entire Klal Yisroel.
ESTHER CLOTHED HERSELF IN THE DIVINE SPIRIT
It is written in the Megillah [5:1]: On the third day, Esther donned [garments of] royalty and stood
in the inner courtyard of the palace, facing the palace. The Gemora asks: The Megillah should have
written that she clothed herself in royal clothing? Rabbi Elozar answers in the name of Rabbi
Chanina: The verse is implying that Esther was clothed in the Divine spirit.
Pachad Yitzchak uses this verse to explain a difficulty regarding the story of Purim. The Gemora
teaches us that the mitzva of destroying Amalek is only applicable after a king has been appointed
over the Jewish people. According to this, the question is asked, how could the Jews in the times
of Purim have fulfilled the mitzva of destroying Amalek by killing Haman and his sons, if they did
not have a king at that time. Pachad Yitzchak answers: It is written in the Megillah that Esther
donned garments of royalty. This teaches us that she assumed the reign over the Jews, similar to a
king, thus allowing the Jewish people to destroy Amalek. Who gave Esther this right? Pachad
Yitzchak does not explain this point.
Rabbi Eliezer Ginzburg, in his sefer Ginzei Hamelech answers: The Shem Mishmuel states that
the primary role of a king is to unite his constituents. He explains: “Esther did not literally assume
the throne. Rather, she enveloped herself with the intense love for fellow Jews which a monarch
must possess if he is to succeed in uniting the people.” This is the explanation of the Gemora.
Esther cloaked herself with an abundance of love towards her fellow Jews and by doing so; she
united the entire Jewish people. As a result of this, the Divine spirit rested upon her.
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BRINGING REDEMPTION TO THE WORLD
Rav Mordechai Kornfeld writes:3
Rebbi Elazar teaches that "when one relates a teaching in the name of the person who originally
said it, he brings redemption to the world." He derives this principle from the verse, "And Esther
told the king [that Bigsan and Seresh were conspiring to assassinate him] in the name of
Mordechai" (Esther 2:22). In the merit of Esther's humbling herself by attributing the source of her
information to Mordechai, the Jewish people were redeemed from the mortal threat that faced
them.
Rebbi Elazar's teaching is difficult to understand. How can this principle be derived from the
actions of Esther? The cause for the redemption from the threat of Haman was clearly a result of
the fact that the king recorded Mordechai's name in his ledgers in order to reward him at a later
time. The fact that the king owed his life to Mordechai eventually led to the salvation of the Jewish
people. How does Rebbi Elazar learn from Esther's attribution of the information to Mordechai
that whenever one relates a teaching in the name of the person who said it, he brings redemption
to the world? (See RIF in EIN YAKOV here who leaves this question unanswered.)
3
https://www.dafyomi.co.il/megilah/insites/mg-dt-015.htm
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The IYUN YAKOV understands the Gemara as follows. Logically, Mordechai should have given
the information directly to Achashverosh so that the king would have had more gratitude to him.
Why did Mordechai instead tell Esther to give the information to Achashverosh? Rebbi Elazar
understands that it must be that Mordechai knew that whenever one attributes his information to
the person who originally told it to him, he brings redemption to the world. This is why Mordechai
specifically wanted Esther to relay the information in his name. He wanted to create a source of
merit for redemption.
The ETZ YOSEF in the name of the MANOS HA'LEVI explains the Gemara here differently.
He says that Mordechai actually wanted Esther to give the information in her own name in order
to boost her standing with the king. Esther, however, was humble and did not want to use the favor
for her own prestige, and instead she attributed the information to Mordechai. This trait of humility
is a trait of Mashi'ach, who is described as "a poor person who rides a donkey" (Zecharyah 9:9).
A genuine redeemer knows that he is not the power behind redemption and that he is merely an
agent of Hash-m.
The TORAH TEMIMAH (to Esther 2:22) writes that Rebbi Elazar is not teaching a form of
supernatural cause and effect. Rather, his intention is merely to point out that when one attributes
his information to its original source, positive outcomes tend to result. Rebbi Elazar uses the word
"redemption" because that happens to be the positive outcome that occurred in the case of Esther,
who attributed her information to Mordechai. He does not mean that a form of redemption will
occur whenever one attributes his information to its original source. (Y. Montrose)
ACHASHVEROSH: DOG OR LION?
Megilah relates that Mordechai instructed Esther to present herself before Achashverosh in a
desperate attempt to save the Jewish people. Until the news of Haman's decree, Esther had not
been in the intimate company of Achashverosh unless he had requested her presence; this time,
however, she would present herself to him on her own accord. She was Halachically permitted to
do this because the survival of the Jewish people was at stake. (The rule of "Yehareg v'Al Ya'avor"
did not apply, as the Gemara in Sanhedrin 74b explains.) This concern was uppermost in Esther's
mind as she advanced towards the throne room in silent prayer that Hash-m would give her favor
in the eyes of the evil king whose golden scepter dictated the fate of those who appeared before
him unbidden.
The Gemara says that on her way, Esther passed the royal room of idol worship. At that moment,
the Divine Presence that had accompanied her until now departed, and she suddenly felt alone and
unprotected. Esther cried out, "My G-d, my G-d, why have You deserted me?" (Tehilim 22:2).
She said, "Perhaps You are judging me for a forbidden act done under duress (in order to save
Your people) as if it was done willfully?"
"Or perhaps," she continued, "You are upset with me for calling Achashverosh a 'dog' ('Hatzilah...
mi'Yad Kelev Yechidasi,' Tehilim 22:21)? If so, I shall make amends and call him a lion ('Hoshi'eni
13
mi'Pi Aryeh,' Tehilim 22:22)." Esther's reckoning succeeded. The Divine Presence returned to her
and she approached the king with renewed confidence -- and Divine protection.
14
In what way did Esther sin by calling Achashverosh a dog? Why did belittling the evil king cause
the Shechinah to depart from her?
Moreover, how was calling Achashverosh a dog related to her first concern, that perhaps Hash-m
was punishing her for an act she did out of compulsion?
RAV YAKOV EMDEN quotes his father, the CHACHAM TZVI, who offers the following
answer.
The Mishnah in Bava Metzia (93b) teaches that if a lion attacks sheep, the shepherd (who is a
Shomer Sachar, a paid guardian) is exempt from damages because he is not expected to be able to
repel a lion. Such an attack is considered an "Ones," beyond the control of the shepherd. However,
if the sheep are attacked by a dog, or even by several dogs, the shepherd is held liable for the
damages because the attack is not considered an "Ones." It is within the capability of the shepherd
to fend off dogs.
The words of Esther are now understood. Esther justified her action with the claim that she was
"Ones," acting under duress. She then remembered that she had called Achashverosh a dog in her
prayer for salvation, a contradiction to her present claim for Divine amnesty. If Achashverosh was
considered like an attacking dog, then her act should not be considered an "Ones," an act beyond
her control, because the attack of a dog can easily be repelled as the Mishnah in Bava Metzia states.
Hence, she immediately corrected her mistake and admitted that Achashverosh was more than just
a "dog." It was far more appropriate to compare him to a lion; after all, his domain extended to
vast distances and his power was virtually unlimited. Since Achashverosh was a "lion," his attack
is considered an "Ones" for which Esther should be vindicated.
QUEEN ESTHER'S INTENTION IN MAKING A BANQUET FOR

ACHASHVEROSH AND HAMAN
The Gemara suggests ten explanations for why Esther invited Haman to join her and the king at
the first banquet she made in the king's honor as part of her plan to persuade the king to rescind
the decree against the Jews. Since she had no intention to reveal her identity as a Jew or to beseech
the king to save her people from the evil plot of Haman until the second banquet, why did she
invite Haman to the first?
The VILNA GA'ON (in KOL ELIYAHU 142) cites the Gemara in Pesachim (111a) to explain
Esther's motivation. The Vilna Ga'on writes that "had I been there, I would have added another
reason why she invited him." The Gemara earlier (15a) says that when Esther heard the news of
Haman's plot against the Jews, it shocked her so much that she became a Nidah. Three days later,
she made the first party for Achashverosh and Haman. Her motivation was to invite the two of
them and to situate herself, a Nidah, between them.
15
The Gemara in Pesachim says that if a woman walks between two men while she is a Nidah, a
tragedy will result. If she has just begun her state of Nidah, one of the men will be killed. If she is
near the end of her flow, a quarrel will arise between the two men.
16
Esther reasoned that if she was at the beginning of her state of Nidah, then either Haman or
Achashverosh would die, and the decree would be annulled. (The Gemara in Ta'anis (29a) says that
when the senate issued a decree and, subsequently, one member of the senate died, his death was
interpreted as an omen that the decree must be annulled. However, it is not clear that this rule
actually applied in the case of Haman, because it is evident from the Megilah that his death did not
cause the decree to be rescinded since the decree was signed with the king's signet and it was
necessary for the king himself to repeal it.)
If she was at the end of her state of Nidah, then a quarrel would arise between Haman and
Achashverosh, and again Achashverosh would rescind the decree. Either way, the decree would be
revoked as a result of Esther's strategy. (In the end, her strategy was successful in both ways. A
quarrel erupted between Haman and Achashverosh, and Haman was killed.)
AROUSING THE KING'S JEALOUSY
The Gemara suggests ten explanations for why Esther invited Haman to join her and the king at the
first banquet she made in the king's honor as part of her plan to persuade the king to rescind the
decree against the Jews.
Raban Gamliel states that the reason suggested by Rebbi Eliezer ha'Moda'i is the most fitting of all.
Rebbi Eliezer ha'Moda'i said that Esther's intention was to make the king and all of the other officers
jealous of Haman, which indeed is what ultimately happened. When the king stepped out into the
palace garden during Esther's second banquet, Haman pleaded before Esther for his life. When
Achashverosh returned he found that Haman had fallen on the couch with Esther. Achashverosh
exclaimed, "ha'Gam li'Chbosh Es ha'Malkah Imi ba'Bayis!" -- "Does he even want to overtake the
queen with me in the house!" (Esther 7:8). Charvonah, one of the king's officers, suggested to the
king that he hang Haman on his own gallows.
A remarkable allusion supports Rebbi Eliezer ha'Moda'i's explanation for why Esther invited
Haman to her banquet. There is only one verse in all of Tanach in which the word "Mishteh"
(banquet) appears as an acronym (either as Roshei Teivos, the first letters of four consecutive
words, or as Sofei Teivos, the last letters of four consecutive words). This singular appearance of
this acronym occurs in none other than the very verse which expresses how jealous Achashverosh
became of Haman -- "ha'Ga*m* li'Chbo*sh* E*t* ha'Malka*h* Imi ba'Bayis." (RAV
MORDECHAI ARAN in NIFLA'OS MI'TORASECHA)
Steinzaltz (OBM) writes:
Our daf continues sharing Rabbinic interpretations of the story of Megillat Esther.
17
Although Haman‘s rise to power brought with it wealth and honor (see Esther 5:11), nevertheless,
the Megillah records that Haman feels that none of it is worth anything to him, so long as he sees
Mordechai residing in the king’s court (see Esther 5:13).
What was it about Mordechai that so disturbed Haman?
Rav Hisda explains zeh ba be-prozbuli, ve-zeh ba be-prozbuti – this one came with wealth, i.e.
claiming that debts were owed to him, and the other one came with poverty, i.e. claims made
against him. Rav Papa concludes that the latter was called “a servant who was sold for bread.”
These statements refer to a well-known story that does not appear in the Talmud, but is mentioned
in several midrashim. According to this story, prior to his appointment as advisor and confidant to
the king, Haman was a barber and bath attendant. King Achashverosh sent both Haman and
Mordechai to war as generals, responsible for different parts of the army. Haman was a poor
administrator who spent his funds unwisely and could not feed or support his troops. Desperate,
he turned to Mordechai and was forced to sell himself into slavery, with Mordechai becoming his
master. Thus, Haman’s rise to power notwithstanding, Mordechai’s position in the king’s court
was a constant threat from which Haman was desperate to free himself.
The turning point in the story of the Megillah takes place when the king cannot sleep (see Esther
6:1) and calls for the reading of the book that chronicled palace events. A number of suggestions
are put forward with regard to this episode of insomnia:
• Rava says that Achashverosh could not sleep because he was concerned with Esther‘s
sudden interest in having Haman over to the palace on a regular basis – a concern echoed
in the king’s angry response to seeing Haman on the couch with Esther in 7:8.
• Rabbi Tanchum teaches that the “king” who could not sleep was the Almighty, King of the
world. In fact, many commentaries argue that references to ha-Melekh throughout the
Megillah, are, in fact, hidden references to God, who is controlling events the entire time,
albeit through a veil of secrecy.
18
Esther's Banquet by Salomon Koninck
The teachings of Rabbi Chanina

Mark Kerzner writes:4
The four most beautiful women in history were Sarah, Abigail, Rachav and Esther. Some say that
Esther was of unhealthy complexion, and only Divine intervention made her beloved by all; they
take out Esther from the list, and put in Vashti.
4
https://talmudilluminated.com/megillah/megillah15.html
19
Rachav inspired lust by the mere mention of her name. In fact, one who says "Rachav, Rachav"
would emit a seminal discharge. Rav Nachman said to Rav Yitchak, "I said it, and I was not
concerned." Rav Yitchak answered, "I meant, only those who knew her."
Rabbi Elazar retold the following teaching of Rabbi Chanina: Whoever transmits a teaching and
mentions who he heard it from - brings redemption to the world, just as Esther, who "told the king
about a plot against him - in the name of Mordechai."
More teachings from Rabbi Chanina follow.
Haman said, "All my wealth is not worth anything to me when I see Mordechai." Why? - Because
of an incident when Haman sold himself as a slave to Mordechai, and "all that belongs to the slave
really belongs to his master."
Another teaching: in the future God himself will be the crown of beauty on the head of every
righteous. The Attribute of Justice then said, "How are these (Israel) different from the others?"
God replied, "They study the Torah, and the others do not." Then the Attribute of Justice said, "But
the wrongdoers among them will still have to give an account," and to this the Talmud does not
give here any answer.
Rabbi Elazar in the name of Rabbi Chanina teaches that properly attributing credit to the source of
any information leads to redemption for the world.5
Yet, this statement is found in Pirkei Avos (6:6), where the statement is cited, and its source is
identified as the episode of Mordechai informing Esther about the plot of Bigsan and Seresh, and
Esther conveying that information in the name of Mordechai. What, then, is the point of Rabbi
Chanina teaching a lesson found in Pirkei Avos?
5
https://www.dafdigest.org/masechtos/Megilla%20015.pdf
20
This statement of Rabbi Elazar in the name of Rabbi Chanina is part of a series of statements which
he issued. Ravina and Rav Ashi included this comment to associate it with the comment which
immediately follows it. “When a righteous person passes from this world, his generation has lost
him, but he has not suffered a loss. It is as a pearl, lost to its owner. Wherever it is, it is still intact.
It is just that its owner has lost track of it.
So, too, when a righteous person passes on. His soul continues its existence, but just not here on
earth.” This statement is puzzling, because the soul of a righteous person can no longer grow in
Torah and mitzvos once it has left this world! In what way can it be compared to a pearl which
suffers no loss due to its being concealed from its owner? The lesson is that as long as students in
this world continue to study the words of their rebbe, even after he passes on, the words resonate
in the spiritual realm, and the soul of the rebbe continues to rise and thrive. His Torah lessons
remain relevant and current, and his death has not affected this growth. This concept parallels the
idea that repeating information in someone's name is to his credit, and this is why Ravina and Rav
Ashi attributed these statements to Rabbi Chanina.
Half the kingdom but not the entire kingdom; And not something that would divide the kingdom.
What is that? The building of the Beis Mamikdash.
A Jewish man married a non-Jewish woman and continued to practice Judaism. As Pesach
approached he posed the following question. Is it permitted for him to give all his chometz to his
wife, instead of selling it to another non-Jew or what a
woman acquires her husband acquires- applies and it is an ineffective method of removing chometz
from his domain.
The Shvus Yaakov (1) demonstrates that this principle applies to non-Jews as it does for Jews from
the fact that regarding matters of illicit relations the Torah recognizes the marriage of non-Jews,
21
thus it is logical to assume that the principle what a woman acquires her husband acquires applies
as well. The more difficult question is whether the principle applies if a Jewish man is married to
a non-Jewish woman. Shvus Yaakov answers that halacha requires a person to destroy any chometz
that, according to the government, is the financial responsibility of a Jew. Consequently, the Jew
in question may not give his chometz to his “wife” since legally it remains in his possession.
This thought is supported by a comment of the Maharsha (2) to our Gemara. Maharsha questions
how Chazal knew that when Achashverosh limited his offer to Esther to half the kingdom he
communicated that he would not permit the construction of the Beis HaMikdash. Maharsha
answers that he couldn’t have meant literally half the kingdom since that would be an ineffective
gift since whatever she would acquire would immediately become his based on the principle, what
a woman acquires becomes her husband’s, therefore he must have had different intentions, i.e. the
Beis HaMikdash.
Rav Sholom Mordechai Schwadron (3), addressing a different question, also examined the issue
of whether this principle applies for non-Jews. After citing the opinions of Shvus Yaakov and
Maharsha, he wrote that according to those Poskim4 who maintain that this principle is a Rabbinic
enactment rather than Biblical law, it is logical to assume that it was created for Jews rather than
non-Jews.
We find on our daf that one who repeats a Torah concept in the name of the one who originally
said it brings redemption to the world. Once, the Nodah B’Yehudah, zt”l, and Rav Yeshaya Pik,
zt”l, were discussing the Magen Avraham who says that one who does not follow this dictum
actually transgresses a negative prohibition.
The Magen Avraham cites the Gemara in the first chapter of Nedarim as a source. Rav Yeshaya
said, “This is not found anywhere in Nedarim. I think that the source for this is in the Yalkut
Shimoni on Mishlei 22:22: ‘Don’t steal from the poor man, for he is downtrodden.’
In its explanation of the verse, the Medrash cites Rav Chiya, who says that anyone who repeats a
Torah concept from another but presents it as his own is really thieving from the originator of the
idea.” .
22
The Nodah B’Yehudah disagreed, however. “I think that the source is the Medrash Tanchuma on
Parshas Bamidbar # : ‘…Rabbi Tanchum HaLavlar said in the name of the elders that it is a
halachah l’Moshe m’Sinai that anyone who repeats another’s idea but passes it off as his own
transgresses the dictum not to “steal from the poor man.”
On the other hand, anyone who says something in the name of the one he heard it from brings
redemption to the world!’” The Chida, zt”l, would say: “Not only may you not ‘steal your friend’s
tallis’ by saying the idea in your own name. You may not even say, ‘I heard…’ without naming
the one who said it!”
When telling this over, Rav Shmuel Hominer, zt”l, would qualify this teaching with another related
idea from the Sefer Chasidim. In it, we find that when someone hears a d’var Torah and he suspects
that it might not be accepted if he repeats it in the originator’s name, then the teller should withhold
the name of the source. Furthermore, if one feels that citing the name of the originator will prevent
the listener from accepting the idea because the listener has a bias against the originator, one should
indeed say it anonymously.
Rabbi Jeremy Rosen writes:6
A few days ago, we looked at what the rabbis had to say about Vashti, for good and for ill. Today,
we turn to her famous successor: Esther. Was Queen Esther largely a good looker who lucked into
a position of influence? Or was her intelligence and charm her real strength?
The sages begin by declaring that whatever else we can say about her, Esther was certainly beautiful
— in fact, one of the most beautiful women in the world, as this teaching makes clear:
The sages taught, there were four women of extraordinary beauty in the world: Sarah, Abigail,
Rahab, and Esther.
Not all agree that Esther was a great beauty. In fact, this teaching, the Gemara quickly points out,
contradicts an earlier statement (Megillah 13a) that Esther was green (like the iconic Wicked
Witch?), meaning it must have been her sweetness and kindness that made her so attractive to
Ahasuerus. So which is it? The Talmud suggests that if Esther was actually unattractive, as the one
who stated she was green must believe, then she ought to be replaced in the list of four great beauties
by Vashti, whom we also know was stunning (even if the rabbis were ambivalent about her for
many other reasons, as we recently learned.) But it doesn’t resolve the dilemma.
Either way, Esther was certainly more than a pretty (or ugly) face, as the rabbis explain, citing this
verse in which Esther trepidatiously prepares to enter the throne room of the king without an
invitation:
“And it came to pass on the third day, that Esther clothed herself in royalty” (Esther 5:1).
6
Myjewishlearning.com
23
It should have said: Esther clothed herself in royal garments (instead of just royalty).
Rabbi Elazar said, quoting Rabbi Hanina: This teaches that she clothed herself with a divine
spirit.
Here, the rabbis have explicitly inverted the plain meaning of the megillah. A verse that suggests
Esther dolled herself up in finery to please the king transforms the act of primping into something
far more sacred: surrounding herself with a divine spirit. This Esther is certainly more than a
dreamboat — she is both righteous and clever.
As is its wont, the Talmud goes on to quote other teachings that Rabbi Elazar espoused in the name
of Rabbi Hanina, which also happen to stress the value of good character:
Rabbi Elazar said, quoting Rabbi Hanina: One should never regard the blessing of an ordinary
person as unimportant in one’s eyes.
Rabbi Elazar said, quoting Rabbi Hanina: When a righteous man dies, the loss is felt by the rest
of that generation. Similar to a man who has lost a pearl — wherever it is, it is still a pearl, only
the owner is deprived.
And one more:
Rabbi Elazar said quoting Rabbi Hanina: Whoever reports a saying in the name of the person
who originally said it brings redemption to the world. As it is stated, “And Esther reported it to
the king in the name of Mordechai” (Esther 2:22).
Mordechai, those familiar with the story will recall, discovered the plot to assassinate Ahasuerus
and quickly communicated it to Esther, who relayed it on to the king in the name of Mordechai.
This chain of reporting led to Mordechai being elevated and, together with Esther, saving the Jews.
In this way, we might say, reporting a teaching in the name of the person who first said it really did
bring redemption.
What appears at first glance to be a scattershot list of teachings Rabbi Elazar brought in the name
of Rabbi Hanina turns out to have more structure and coherence than these lists sometimes do. This
last teaching, in particular, not only brings us full circle back to the megillah, but it preaches what
it practices: always citing one’s sources.
24
Rabbi Johnny Solomon writes:7
Our daf (Megillah 15a) includes the teaching of Rabbi Elazar in the name of Rabbi Chanina that
the blessing of an ordinary person should never be treated lightly in our eyes.
In terms of the meaning of this statement, Rav Dessler explains8 that we learn from here how we
are each spiritually interconnected - whereby the merit of one person can benefit another: ‘The
interdependence of people means that their relations to each other and the things they do and say
to each other have an effect in the spiritual world.’ Moreover, he then adds that, ‘it is not just the
people of a lesser status who depend on the greater, but the opposite as well.’
Personally, I think that much can be learnt from this last remark of Rav Dessler which offers us a
key into understanding this cryptic teaching found in our daf. This is because, quite often, we either
consciously or subconsciously spiritually ‘rate’ people. There are those who we consider spiritually
‘greater’, and those who we consider spiritually ‘lesser’, and while we may treat the words and
blessings of the greater with reverence, we can often be dismissive and, to use our Gemara’s words,
‘treat lightly in our eyes’, the words and blessings of those we consider to be the ‘lesser’.
Given this fact our Gemara comes along and teaches us that those who we think are ‘greater’ are
just as spiritually reliant on those who we think are ‘lesser’ and that, to quote Rabbi Sacks, while
‘not everyone is a master of Jewish law…spirituality is engraved in all our souls’ (Studies in
Spirituality p. xvii). Therefore, precisely because we all have a connection to spirituality, and
precisely because we are all spiritually connected, the blessings of seemingly ‘ordinary’ people
should never be treated lightly in our eyes.
7
www.rabbijohnnysolomon.com
8
see Strive for Truth Feldheim Publishers 2016 Vol. 2 158
25
Esther before Ahasuerus by Jacopo Tintoretto (1519-94)
Esther – Alone in the Palace
Rabbi Yisroel Roll writes:9
Then Mordechai bade them to return answer unto Esther: ‘Think not with yourself that you
will escape in the king’s house, more than all the Jews. For if you altogether hold your peace
at this time, then will relief and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place, but you and
your father’s house will perish; and who knows whether you have not come to royal estate for
such a time as this?‘ Then Esther bade them return answer unto Mordechai: Go, gather together
all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast You for me, and neither eat nor drink three
days, night or day; I also and my maidens will fast in like manner; and so will I go in unto the
king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish.
Esther 4:13-16
Our daf states:
9
https://torah.org/learning/empowering-women-esther/
26
Esther was alone, seemingly abandoned in the palace. At least, however she had been allowed to
continue living as “wife and husband” with her real husband, Mordechai, as Tosafos[1] explains,
that until then she would leave the embrace of Achashverosh, go to the mikvah, and resume an
intimate, holy, relationship with her husband Mordechai. However, now Mordechai was
demanding that she “voluntarily” submit herself to Achashverosh in order to plead to save her
people. It seemed that even her husband, Mordechai, was now abandoning her, and seemingly
sentencing her to a life of loneliness in the palace.
Until that moment, she had been allowed, halachically, to continue living with Mordechai because
she had been taken to the King Achashverosh against her will, as the Megillah states:
Every time she had lived with the king it was considered that she was involuntarily submitting to
him, so she was still permitted to her real husband. Now, however, she was going to the king
willingly, and would no longer be permitted halachically to live with Mordechai. The feeling of
emotional loneliness that she must have experienced at that moment prompted her to utter the
following prayer:
What merit did Esther invoke in order to be saved? The three signs, that Sarah had bequeathed to
Rivka, and that Rachel had given to Leah, under the chuppah, and that Channah invoked in
pleading for a child, and that now, Esther invoked hhin pleading to be redeemed.[2]
The connection between these three signs (Shabbos candles, Challah and Family Purity), and
Jewish prayer is that prayer is not a request for personal benefit, rather, prayer is to increase the
honor of God, known as Shulchan Gavoah—the Table on High, the sake of Heaven. Each of the
Matriarch’s prayers was answered so that she could have a child to whom to teach the mesorah of
Shabbos, Challah, and Mikvah—the three pillars of Torah life.
When Mordechai demanded that Esther go the king, he was asking her to sacrifice her personal
happiness for a higher goal—the continuity of the Jewish people. Esther had a child through her
27
“marriage” to Achashverosh, name Daryavesh (Darius II) who was the King who ordered the
resumption of the rebuilding of the Second Temple, in the time of Ezra, which had been halted by
Achashverosh. Esther’s sacrifice brought about the redemption of the Jewish People and the
continuation of Jewish service in the Temple.
Was that worth her personal aloneness in the palace?
The Malbim explains that whenever someone experiences something unusual, or outside the norm,
it is evident that Hashem is doing this to achieve a Divine Goal. When Esther was taken from
orphanhood, to become the Queen of Persia, which is extraordinary, it was clear that she rose to
this position of greatness, albeit alone, for a specific purpose, namely, to save the Jewish people.
Esther prayed to God that in the merit of her aloneness as an orphan, and as a woman, alone, in the
palace of Achashverosh. She called out to the Father of Orphans, and asked for mercy, in her
aloneness.
When we are singled out and faced with the challenge of aloneness, it can take on meaning despite
the emotional loneliness. At such times it is our mission and challenge to discover the unique
purpose God is expecting us to extract and deduce from such an experience. When presenting us
with the challenge of aloneness, God “wants something from us” individually, uniquely. That is
why each of us, alone, are often singled out by God, and placed in a position of aloneness. This is
because God is urging us to bring out something from within us that would otherwise remain
dormant, and make a unique contribution to His world.
1. Kesubos 57b
2. The Medrash, in fact, links Sarah to Esther, as follows:
Rabbi Akiva was sitting and expounding, and his audience was falling asleep. Seeking to rouse them, he said: For what reason did
Esther rule over 127 provinces? It was appropriate that Esther, a descendant of Sarah – who lived 127 years – would rule over
127 provinces.” Since Sarah mastered of her spiritual self—she lived her full 127 years without sin and with youthful exuberance,
she merited that her great-granddaughter, Esther, was able to translate that mastery into ruling over the 127 provinces of the
kingdom. Sarah mastered every moment of time that she spent in this world, and so her legacy was such that her mastery over her
use of time translated into her great-granddaughter Esther mastering the wealth of 127 provinces.
28
Ta'anit Esther
Rav David Brofsky writes:10
Unlike the other “minor” fasts, which are enumerated and discussed by the Talmud (Ta'anit
29a), Ta'anit Esther is not mentioned anywhere in the Mishna or Talmud. In fact, the earliest
reference to Ta'anit Esther appears in the eighth-century Geonic work Sheiltot de-Rav Achai,
10
https://etzion.org.il/en/holidays/purim/taanit-esther
29
authored by R. Achai Gaon. In any event, the fast is discussed by the Rishonim, codified by the
Shulchan Arukh (O.C. 686) and universally observed.
What is the source and nature of this fast, and how should we understand its relationship to
Purim?
The Shibolei Ha-leket (cited in the Beit Yosef, O.C. 686) cites Rashi as explaining that
Ta'anit Esther commemorates the three-day fast observed by the Jews of Shushan at Esther’s behest
during the month of Nissan (Megilla 15a), before she approached Achashverosh to invite him to
the feast. Recall from the Megilla that Esther told Mordekhai before she approached the king:
Rashi describes this fast as a "mere custom" (minhag be-alma), and criticizes those who treat it
with unnecessary stringency.
Rabbeinu Tam, on the other hand, as cited by the Rosh (Megilla 1:1), suggests that Ta'anit
Esther is a rabbinic obligation, alluded to by the Talmud (Megilla 2a), and commemorates the day
upon which the Jews gathered to fight those who sought to destroy them (the 13th of Adar). The
Rosh writes:
The Ra'avad (cited by the Ran, Ta'anit 7a in the Rif) offers yet a third explanation:
30
According to the Ra'avad, the fast of Esther was actually instituted as part of the original
Purim edict. Our celebration includes reenacting the fast which preceded the war, during which
the Jewish people experienced a miraculous redemption. Incidentally, the Rambam (Hilkhot
Ta'aniyot 5:5) also identifies this verse as the source for Ta'anit Esther, though he does refer to it
as just a “custom.”
We have thus identified three possible sources for this fast, which reflect three different
levels of the obligation. Seemingly, the lower the obligation of the fast, the more readily we will
permit a person to eat in certain situations. Indeed, the Shulchan Arukh (686:2) states, "This fast is
not an obligation; therefore, we may be lenient regarding the fast in cases of need, such as a
pregnant or nursing woman or a sick patient."
A second question that arises concerns the nature and character of this fast. While the other
fast days express our sorrow over the loss of the Beit Ha-mikdash, it remains unclear whether
Ta'anit Esther shares the mournful qualities of the other fasts. Indeed, the Ra'avad cited above
describes the fast in almost festive terms.
Rav Soloveitchik, as quoted in Rav Michel Shurkin’s Harerei Kedem (188), notes a number
of practical ramifications of this question. For example, would the Rambam’s ruling (Hilkhot
Ta'aniyot 1:14) advocating that one refrain from "idunim" (entertainment or physical delights) on
fast days apply on Ta'anit Esther? If we place Ta’anit Esther in a separate category from the other
fasts, as a festive, rather than mournful, occasion, then we would likely permit such activities.
Indeed, the work Piskei Teshuvot (686:2) rules that on Ta’anit Esther one may listen to music and
prepare new clothing, activities which are generally discouraged on other fast days.
Furthermore, Rav Soloveitchik suggests that the Rambam's assertion that the fast days will
not be observed in the messianic era (Hilkhot Ta'aniyot 5:9) might not apply to Ta'anit Esther,
which is an integral part of the Purim celebration (see Rambam, Hilkhot Megilla 2:18).
While questioning the character of the day, one might also explore whether Ta'anit Esther
constitutes a separate custom or obligation, or whether it is integrally connected to the observance
of Purim.
For example, the Rambam (Hilkhot Megilla 5:5) and Shulchan Arukh (686:2) rule that when
Purim falls on Sunday, in which case we cannot fast on the day immediately preceding Purim
(Shabbat), we fast on the previous Thursday. The Kolbo (R. Aaron b. Yaakov of Lunel), however,
rules (in Siman 45) that one should fast on Friday, so that the fast is juxtaposed to Purim as closely
as possible. (See Shibbolei Ha-leket, Purim, 194, who severely criticizes this practice.) Apparently
the Kolbo views the fast as an integral part of Purim, which should be observed as close to Purim
as possible, even at the price of fasting on Friday, which we generally avoid.
I believe that there is a much deeper question that we must ask, as well, concerning the
observance of Ta’anit Esther: In what way, if at all, does Ta’anit Esther contribute to the Purim
celebration? Some of the aforementioned sources indicate that while the fast may be
31
commemorative, it is hardly integral to the Purim celebration. Furthermore, a careful look at Ta'anit
Esther reveals that it does not, according to some views, accurately commemorate the events
portrayed by the Megilla. Moreover, it does not conform to the rules of other fast days, as we
demonstrated above! These discrepancies seem to indicate that Ta'anit Esther might not
commemorate a tragic event, or any event, at all. Rather, it may simply be another day of Purim,
yet one of a different character.
Rav Soloveitchik zt"l (see Days of Deliverance, pp. 1-4) suggested that Purim and Ta'anit
Esther commemorate two distinct themes of Purim, which he claimed may be rooted in the different
themes of the Megilla itself.
He notes in this context the Gemara’s discussion (Megilla 3b) concerning the requirement
to read the Megilla twice, both by night and during the day. The Gemara cites two Scriptural
sources for this halakha, two verses in which man is commanded to repeat his call to God. The
first source, "My God, I call out to you during the day, but you do not answer, and in the night, as
well, I am not silent" (Tehillim 22:3), compares the Megilla reading to a desperate cry for help.
The second source, "So that my glory may sing praise to you and not be silent, Hashem, my God,
I continuously thank you" (Tehillim 30:13), equates mikra Megilla with a song of praise for God.
Rav Soloveitchik suggested that both themes accurately capture the nature of Purim. During
most of the Purim story, the Jewish people are threatened and pursued; the redemption surfaces
only towards the end of the Megilla. In other words, the story of Purim, and, subsequently, its
celebration, involves two parts: an acknowledgement of the crisis and "what could have been," as
well as thanksgiving for the redemption.
Ta'anit Esther and Purim, therefore, reflect two aspects of the Purim celebration. Each,
without the other, is incomplete. One cannot truly appreciate Purim without having fasted on
Ta'anit Esther, and Ta'anit Esther alone certainly doesn't capture the totality of the Purim story.
Interestingly, the Shibbolei Ha-leket cites R. Amaram Gaon as recording the custom of the
Tanna’im and Amora’im, as well as the “house of the courts,” to recite supplications and solemn
prayers on Purim day itself! Apparently, this custom attempts to integrate both themes into the day
of Purim.
This dialectic, of course, not only portrays the different components of the Purim story, but
accurately reflects the precarious existence of the Jewish people since the destruction of the
Temples, during which time the story of Purim occurred.
32
Esther (detail), Jean-François Portaels, ca. 1869.
“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?” — Jesus or Esther?
A midrash imagines Queen Esther reciting Psalm 22 the moment she was about to enter
Ahasuerus' inner court. Are the rabbis responding to the Passion Narrative, in which Jesus, in
his final moments, recites this lament on the cross?
Dr. Abraham J. Berkovitz writes:11
11
https://www.thetorah.com/author/abraham-j-berkovitz
33
Esther, appraised of the danger posed to the Jews by Haman, fasts for three days and goes to speak
to her husband, King Ahasuerus:
The Babylonian Talmud offers a midrashic interpretation of this royal apparel (b. Megillah 15a):
The interpretation here is based on a gezeirah shava, a rabbinic exegetical tactic that draws
meaning through the analogy of like words. Just as the root ‫ש‬.‫ב‬.‫ ל‬in reference to Amassai refers to
the divine spirit, so too by Esther.
34
In the biblical text, Esther’s hesitation to enter the palace is clear; entering the king’s inner court
uninvited is a capital offense, unless the king extends his golden scepter (Esth 4:11). The midrash,
however, reads more into this dramatic moment and sees her pause as a reaction to the loss of the
divine spirit, to which she responds by chanting the lament of Psalm 22. This midrash continues
with Esther attempting to understand why the spirit left her:
Here Esther notes that the sin of entering the idol-laden palace is being committed under duress,
and she asks God not to treat her as if she were a purposeful sinner. The midrash continues with
Esther raising a second concern:
Esther’s back and forth here is based on verses in Psalm 22, underscoring how the rabbis are
reading the entire lament, not just the opening verse, as Esther’s. [1]
The Lament of Psalm 22 (see also daf Ditty Megillah 4)
Within the context of the Psalter, Psalm 22 is a typical biblical lament. After an opening
superscription, to which I will return later, the poet begins with a plea for help (verse numbering
follows Jewish tradition[2]):
35
The poet describes his wretched state and dire plight, how he is surrounded and mocked:
The psalmist next asks God for support:
The poet concludes by praising God and by promising to offer sacrifices. In a simple, peshat
reading, the psalm is a generic lament, with which any worshiper in straits can identify.[4] And yet,
the rabbis quoted above interpret the psalm as part of Esther’s story. In fact, Jewish tradition has
so intertwined this psalm with the Purim story that it is recited in a number of liturgical traditions
as the psalm of the day.[5]
While it is true that ancient readers of the Bible were sensitive and creative, coveting every textual
nugget, reading Psalm 22 as a reference to Esther seems very forced; nothing in the text suggests
that the woeful lament belongs to Esther. Why demand her presence? The answer lies in the early
Christian use and understanding Psalm 22.[6]
36
The Crucifixion of Jesus: Christian Interpretation
Each of the four canonical gospels draws on Psalm 22 in narrating the story of Jesus’ crucifixion.
In describing Jesus’ last moments, the Gospel of Mark, the earliest canonical gospel, writes:
According to this gospel, Jesus’ final words were a quote from the opening passage of Psalm 22,
though in a Hebrew/Aramaic vernacular adaptation—his native language—instead of in the
psalm’s Hebrew. A nearly identical account appears in Matthew 27:46, which likely used Mark as
a source.[8] But this is only the most obvious connection between Jesus’ passion and the psalm. A
number of other incidents surrounding Jesus’ death use Psalm 22 as their inspiration.
Mocking—Before bringing Jesus to the place where he was to be executed, the soldiers mock
him:
This torment alludes to the Psalmist’s lament,
Mark and Matthew allude to these verses in the passage describing passersbys insulting Jesus on
the cross and shaking their heads:
37
by
Matthew adds that the crowd continues to mock Jesus by saying:
This taunt adopts and modifies the words of the Psalmist’s oppressors:
Matthew supplemented the verse to include Jesus’ claim that he is God’s son, interpreting what
pleases God in Psalm 22 as Jesus’ filial relationship with Him.
Dividing Clothing—The soldiers decide that they want to keep Jesus’ clothes:
That this is a fulfillment of Psalm 22:19 is made explicit in the way the story is told in the Gospel
of John:
The pervasiveness of allusions to this psalm leaves no doubt that the Mark, followed by the other
gospel authors, constructed the passion narrative with Psalm 22 in mind.
38
Further Development in Early Christian Sources
Many leaders of the early church further developed this prophetic Jesus-centered reading of Psalm
22. In his defense of Christianity written for the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Justin Martyr
(100–168 C.E.) not only cites Psalm 22 as proof Jesus’ crucifixion, but also draws particular
attention to a detail in the Septuagint (LXX) version of the psalm that the gospel narratives did not
employ:
The word ‫ ָכֲּאִ ִרי‬comes from either ‫ר‬.‫ו‬.‫כ‬, meaning “to round” or ‫ה‬/‫י‬.‫ר‬.‫כ‬. “to dig or gouge,”[16] yielding
“my hands and feet are gouged/pierced/shriveled.” Such a reading connects with the next phrase,
‫ֲאַס ֵֵצּרָ◌ָכּל ַﬠְצמָבָֿתי‬, “I can count my bones.” The speaker here describes his body as a wreck, probably
as a result of starvation and extreme poverty.
The Hebrew text which the Septuagint translated into Greek likely read ‫וראכ‬, a perfect verb in the
3rd person plural, as opposed to MT’s ‫( יראכ‬yod and vav look very similar). This is why Justin
understands the phrase as “they pierced,” which connects with the previous phrase, ‫ֲﬠ◌ ַ ַדת‬
‫“ ְמִֵרִﬠיםִה ִרּיפ ִוּ ִני‬a company of evil doers encircles me.” Justin argues that since nobody pierced the
hands and feet of David the psalm must be voiced by Jesus, who was pierced (=crucified) by
Roman soldiers.
Jesus as the Proper Interpretation
Early Christian authors saw Jesus as the primary interpretive possibility for the troubled voice
within Psalm 22, and in some Christian circles, the psalm became the centerpiece of liturgy on
Good Friday, the day on which Christians commemorate Jesus’ crucifixion.
39
This understanding of Psalm 22 became so entrenched that Jerome (349–407), a central church
father who authored the standard Christian translation of the Bible into Latin known as the Vulgate,
chastised anyone who would read the psalm as pertaining to a figure other than Christ:
While understanding the psalm as voiced in the persona of David would have been natural for
anyone, Christian or Jew, who considered David to be the author of the psalm, Jerome’s comment
about Esther and Mordechai is aimed specifically at Jews, and is important early evidence for the
Jewish use of Psalm 22 in relation to the main characters of the Esther scroll.
And Jerome knew much about Jews and Judaism. Over the course of his life, he studied with many
Jewish teachers.[17] He lived in Bethlehem and took much delight in his part-scholastic and
partpugilistic interactions with Jews and their traditions. It was the Jews who “impiously”
understood Psalm 22 in light of Esther and the Purim narrative.
And, indeed, Rabbi Levi, cited above in b. Megillah 15b, lived in Israel about a century before
Jerome. Perhaps exegetical comments similar to that of R. Levi’s reached Jerome’s ears?
Jewish Polemical Response
While Jerome is responding to the Jewish interpretation of Psalm 22, which clearly existed already
in the 4th century, this Jewish interpretation was likely a response to the Christian reading of the
psalm as having been recited by Jesus during the passion. The need to respond to the Christian
reading of Psalm 22 likely spurred Jewish interpreters to find an alternative reading, which they
did by associating the psalm with the Purim story.[18]
40
In short, this Jewish interpretation was not born in a vacuum. Jews and early Christians were
neighbors; they did business together and even attended the same entertaining events. Justin, who
we met above, was a native of Neapolis (Shechem). Origen, another great Church Father, lived in
Caesarea – the hometown of many Jews and even some great rabbinic figures like Rabbi Abbahu
and Rabbi Hoshaya.
Jews and Christians were both curious neighbors and sparring partners.[19] Jews and Christians
frequently – and publicly – debated with one another about the truth of their religion.[20] As Psalm
22 was a mainstay in the Christian arsenal, it was bound to come up in any inter-religious dispute.
Esther as “the Deer of the Dawn”: The End of Miracles
Once Jewish exegesis established Esther as the protagonist of Psalm 22, the rest of that psalm could
be read against the backdrop of the Esther story. Although this does not mean that every such
Jewish homily is a polemic against Jesus, we find a likely example of another such polemic in one
of the many interpretations of the psalm’s enigmatic superscription, ‫“ ַלְמַנֵקּ ַַחַ◌ַﬠל ַאֶיֶּלת ַהַשַּׁ◌ַחר‬To the
leader: according to The Deer of the Dawn” in b. Yoma 29a.
The term “deer of the dawn” and its connection to the opening verse is obscure. This phrase may
indicate that the musical accompaniment to the psalm should be played on an instrument called
ayelet hashaḥar, or played to the tune of a well-known song starting with these words (similar to:
sing to the tune of Yankee Doodle). The Talmud prefers to search for a meaning that connects the
enigmatic phrase “Deer of Dawn” to Esther.
Among the many voices on display is that of R. Assi:
41
The logic of his homily is difficult to understand: Why is Esther’s story the end of all miracles? R.
Assi’s comment best makes sense if we read it against the background of anti-Christian Purim
parody. Esther, who suffered for her people and triumphed, invalidates Jesus’ miracles and
authoritative claims.
Responding to the Miracles Following Jesus’ Death
The strange association of miracles with night and the conclusion of miracles with day is a result
of R. Assi borrowing and undermining a New Testament passion account motif. According to the
Synoptic Gospels, during the passion,
“from noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon”[21]
(Matt 27:45; cf. Mark 15:33 and Luke 23:44). At that point, at the moment of Jesus’ death (Matt
27:45; cf. Mark 15:34; Luke 23:45),
“while the sun’s light failed, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom…”[22]
(Matt 27:51 cf. Mark 15:38 and Luke 23:45).
Matthew, the most popular gospel during Late Antiquity, contains additional miracles:
Matt 27:51
…The earth shook, and the rocks were split. 27:52 The tombs also were opened, and many
bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.[23]
These accounts end with the centurion witnessing the miracles and, as a consequence, confirming
the divinity (Matt 27:54; Mark 15:39) or innocence (Luke 23:47) of Jesus. For Jews, Esther—not
Jesus—stands at the liminal moment between darkness and light, between authority providing
miracles and the end of miracles.
42
Esther in Place of Jesus
The interpretation of Psalm 22 in Late Antiquity provides a window into the perennial war of words
between Jews and Christians. The psalm – a standard poem of lament – became a locus of heated
controversy. Christians understood the poem as a prophetic pronouncement of Jesus’ crucifixion
and used their reading as evidence for the truth of their religion.
Jews countered with their own reading of the psalm: They linked it with the Purim narrative and
argued that the suffering voice in the psalm does not belong to Jesus, but to Esther. Esther stands
in place of Jesus as the Jewish Christ, invalidating other later Christ-type figures – including Jesus.
Footnotes
|
1. This essay is an abridged version of Abraham Jacob Berkovitz, “Jewish and Christian Exegetical Controversy in Late
Antiquity: The Case of Psalm 22 and the Esther Narrative,” in Ancient Readers and their Scriptures: Engaging the
Hebrew Bible in Early Judaism and Christianity, eds. Garrick V. Allen and John Anthony Dunne (Leiden: Brill, 2019),
222–239; full documentation is found there. For other treatments of the rabbinic connection between Psalm 22 and Esther,
see Esther M. Menn, “No Ordinary Lament: Relecture and the Identity of the Distressed in Psalm 22,” Harvard
Theological Review 93 (2000): 301–341; Catherine Brown Tkacz, “Esther, Jesus, and Psalm 22,” Catholic Biblical
Quarterly 70 (2008): 709–728 .
2. The Christian tradition counts the superscription as part of the opening verse, and not a separate verse on its own, and
thus the numbering in Christian Bibles for this psalm is always -1 from the Jewish numbering.
3. English translation of biblical verses is from NRSV with slight adjustments.
4. Editor’s note: For more on generic laments in Psalms and their function, see Carleen Mandolfo, “Language of Lament in
the Psalms,” in Oxford Handbook of the Psalms, ed. William P. Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 114–
30; Claus Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms, trans. Keith R. Crim and Richard Soulen (Atlanta: John Knox
Press, 1981), 64–81; Hermann Gunkel, Introduction to Psalms: The Genres of the Religious Lyric of Israel, ed. Joachim
Begrich, trans. James D. Nogalski (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998), 131–198; trans. of, Einleitung in die
Psalmen: die Gattungen der religiosen Lyrik Israels, 4th ed., Göttinger Handkommentar zum Alten Testamentum
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985; repr. of 1933).
43
5. This is why the custom developed in medieval Judaism to read this psalm on Purim as the psalm of the day. See Elchanan
Samet, “Psalm 22: My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me? Complaint, Supplication, and Thanksgiving,” The
Israel Koschitsky Virtual Beit Midrash, trans. David Strauss.
6. By “early Christian” in this essay I include, somewhat anachronistically, Jesus believing Jews and Gentiles from the first
century and onwards. This includes the authors of the canonical gospels, many of whom would not view themselves with
the clear identity label: “Christian.”

Κατά Μάρκον 15:34
7. καὶ τῇ ἐνάτῃ ὥρᾳ ἐβόησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς φωνῇ μεγάλῃ· ελωι ελωι λεμα σαβαχθανι; ὅ ἐστιν
μεθερμηνευόμενον· ὁ θεός μου ὁ θεός μου, εἰς τί ἐγκατέλιπές με;
8. The Gospel of Luke has different last words for Jesus:

Κατά Λουκάν 23:26
καὶ φωνήσας φωνῇ μεγάλῃ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν· πάτερ, εἰς χεῖράς σου παρατίθεμαι τὸ πνεῦμά μου. τοῦτο δὲ
εἰπὼν ἐξέπνευσεν.
Luke 23:46
Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he
breathed his last.
The Gospel of John (ch. 19) has yet a third set of final words. After telling his disciples that he is thirsty, they put wine
in a sponge and pass it up to his mouth on a stick:
Κατά Ιωάννην 19:30

ὅτε οὖν ἔλαβεν τὸ ὄξος [ὁ] Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν· τετέλεσται, καὶ κλίνας τὴν κεφαλὴν παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα.
John 19:30
When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Κατά Μάρκον 15:17 15:18

9. Καὶ ἐνδιδύσκουσιν αὐτὸν πορφύραν καὶ περιτιθέασιν αὐτῷ πλέξαντες ἀκάνθινον στέφανον· καὶ
15:19
ἤρξαντο ἀσπάζεσθαι αὐτόν· χαῖρε, βασιλεῦ τῶν Ἰουδαίων· καὶ ἔτυπτον αὐτοῦ τὴν κεφαλὴν καλάμῳ καὶ ἐνέπτυον
15:20
αὐτῷ καὶ τιθέντες τὰ γόνατα προσεκύνουν αὐτῷ. Καὶ ὅτε ἐνέπαιξαν αὐτῷ, ἐξέδυσαν αὐτὸν τὴν πορφύραν καὶ
ἐνέδυσαν αὐτὸν τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτοῦ….
10.
Καὶ οἱ παραπορευόμενοι ἐβλασφήμουν αὐτὸν κινοῦντες τὰς κεφαλὰς αὐτῶν καὶ λέγοντες· οὐὰ ὁ καταλύων
τὸν ναὸν καὶ οἰκοδομῶν ἐν τρισὶν ἡμέραις, 15:30 σῶσον σεαυτὸν καταβὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ σταυροῦ.
Κατά Μαθθαίον 27:43

11. πέποιθεν ἐπὶ τὸν θεόν, ῥυσάσθω νῦν εἰ θέλει αὐτόν·

12. Καὶ σταυροῦσιν αὐτὸν καὶ διαμερίζονται τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτοῦ βάλλοντες κλῆρον ἐπ᾽ αὐτὰ τίς τί ἄρῃ.
13. Οἱ οὖν στρατιῶται, ὅτε ἐσταύρωσαν τὸν Ἰησοῦν, ἔλαβον τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐποίησαν τέσσαρα μέρη,
ἑκάστῳ στρατιώτῃ μέρος, καὶ τὸν χιτῶνα. ἦν δὲ ὁ χιτὼν ἄραφος, ἐκ τῶν ἄνωθεν ὑφαντὸς δι᾽ ὅλου. 19:24 εἶπαν οὖν πρὸς
44
ἀλλήλους· μὴ σχίσωμεν αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ λάχωμεν περὶ αὐτοῦ τίνος ἔσται· ἵνα ἡ γραφὴ πληρωθῇ [ἡ λέγουσα]· διεμερίσαντο
τὰ ἱμάτιά μου ἑαυτοῖς καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν ἱματισμόν μου ἔβαλον κλῆρον. Οἱ μὲν οὖν στρατιῶται ταῦτα ἐποίησαν.
14. δραμὼν δέ τις [καὶ] γεμίσας σπόγγον ὄξους περιθεὶς καλάμῳ ἐπότιζεν αὐτὸν…
15. Μετὰ τοῦτο εἰδὼς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὅτι ἤδη πάντα τετέλεσται, ἵνα τελειωθῇ ἡ γραφή, λέγει· διψῶ. 19:29 σκεῦος
ἔκειτο ὄξους μεστόν· σπόγγον οὖν μεστὸν τοῦ ὄξους ὑσσώπῳ περιθέντες προσήνεγκαν αὐτοῦ τῷ στόματι.
16. In the Hebrew, v. 22c reads, ‫ָכֲִּא ִרי ָיַדי ְוַר ְ ָגָלי‬, which would mean “my hands and feet are like lions.” Since this makes little
sense in context, most scholars assume the aleph is not functioning as a consonant, but as a mater lectionis representing
a long vowel.
17. In his 84th letter, Jerome defends his study with a certain Jew named Didymus:
Yet can anyone find fault with me for having had a Jew as a teacher. Does a certain person dare to bring forward against
me the letter I wrote to Didymus calling him my master? It is a great crime, it would seem, for me a disciple to give to
one both old and learned the name of master.
See https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206/npnf206.v.LXXXIV.html
18. As noted above, the Talmudic homily interprets other verses from the psalm as well. Esther invokes the psalm to explain
why God abandoned her: perhaps she derided the king by equating him with a dog. Esther attempts to reclaim God’s
goodwill by doubling-back and referring to the king as a lion. R. Levi may highlight these particular verses in order to
undermine the claims made about them by early Christians, who assert that Jesus is the “precious one” of Ps 22:21 and
that the “horns of the wild oxen” in Ps 22:22 represent Jesus’ humiliation on the cross.
19. Even ordinary Christians maintained contact with their Jewish neighbors. Jewish festivals and rituals were so compelling
to early Christians that some of their leaders devoted entire cycles of homilies to cement the religious boundary between
Jew and Christian. John Chrysostom (349–407), a prolific church leader in Antioch, Syria gives voice to the concern of
a pastor attempting to corral his wayward flock:
What is this disease? The festivals of the pitiful and miserable Jews are soon to march upon us one after the other and in
quick succession: the feast of Trumpets, the feast of Tabernacles, the fasts. There are many in our ranks who say they
think as we do. Yet some of these are going to watch the festivals and others will join the Jews in keeping their feasts
and observing their fasts. I wish to drive this perverse custom from the Church right now. My homilies against the
Anomians can be put off to another time, and the postponement would cause no harm. But now that the Jewish festivals
are close by and at the very door, if I should fail to cure those who are sick with the Judaizing disease. I am afraid that,
because of their ill-suited association and deep ignorance, some Christians may partake in the Jews' transgressions; once
they have done so, I fear my homilies on these transgressions will be in vain. For if they hear no word from me today,
45
they will then join the Jews in their fasts; once they have committed this sin it will be useless for me to apply the remedy
(Against the Jews 1.5).
We learn from Chrysostom’s plaintive lament that some Christians observed Jewish festivals – both as spectators and as
participants. In a similar vein, some Jews were presumably fascinated with the Church and its mysteries.
20. A world without movies and televisions was not one devoid of spectacle and entertainment. Open debate was the stuff of
life, a true ancient pastime.

21. Απὸ δὲ ἕκτης ὥρας σκότος ἐγένετο ἐπὶ πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν.

22. πέποιθεν Καὶ ἰδοὺ τὸ καταπέτασμα τοῦ ναοῦ ἐσχίσθη ἀπ᾽ ἄνωθεν ἕως κάτω εἰς δύο…
23. …καὶ ἡ γῆ ἐσείσθη καὶ αἱ πέτραι ἐσχίσθησαν, 27:52 καὶ τὰ μνημεῖα ἀνεῴχθησαν καὶ πολλὰ σώματα τῶν
κεκοιμημένων ἁγίων ἠγέρθησαν.
46
Rav Moshe Taragin writes:9
Although pikuach nefesh, the saving of human life, overrides all mitzvot of the Torah, the three
cardinal sins of avoda zara (idolatry), shefichut damim (murder) and giluy arayot (immorality) are
so severe that they must be avoided even at pain of death – "yeihareg ve-al ya’avor." This principle
seems to be contested by two gemarot, each of which imply that the concept of yeihereg ve-al
ya’avor does not apply in a situation of giluy arayot.
The gemara in Sanhedrin (74b) questions the appropriateness of Esther’s behavior, and
particularly her willingness to marry Achashverosh even though she was married to Mordechai
(according to Chazal). In questioning her behavior, the gemara claims that her behavior was
unacceptable because the public was aware of her conduct. Even minor mitzvot must be kept under
pain of death if their commission is public knowledge. Although the gemara’s question is relevant,
Esther’s conduct could have been questioned on more basic grounds - she was committing giluy
arayot!! This conduct must be avoided EVEN IN PRIVATE. Why was the gemara only concerned
with the public nature of her conduct and not with her decision to violate giluy arayot?
A similar question arises from a gemara in Ketuvot (3b), which describes halakhically
designated wedding dates. Although Wednesday is the preferred day for weddings, at certain
periods of history they were scheduled for Tuesday. Local tyrants sexually persecuted Jewish
women by demanding relations prior to their weddings; by moving the wedding earlier in the week,
this predicament could be avoided. The gemara - concerned about relinquishing Wednesday as
the wedding day - suggests informing women that their acquiescence to the tyrants is acceptable
since the act is committed be-ones (involuntarily forced). Properly instructed, they would subject
themselves to the treatment without halakhic consequence. This suggestion is surprising because
such behavior is considered giluy arayot and should be forbidden under all circumstances -
including pain of death!!
These two gemarot convinced Rabbenu Tam that sexual relationships with gentiles are not
considered formal giluy arayot. Basing himself upon a gemara in Yevamot (59b) that dismisses
47
the parental pedigree of gentiles, he claims that their sexual activity is not halakhically recognized.
Consequently, relations with a gentile – although forbidden – would not constitute giluy arayot
and would not demand yeihareg ve-al ya’avor. Based upon this ruling, he allowed a gentile
adulterer and Jewish adulteress to marry after the former converted, despite the fact that an
adulterer is generally forbidden to marry the adulteress. Since adultery with a gentile is not
considered giluy arayot, the prohibition of marriage would not result from their sin. Before
conversion, the gentile is forbidden to marry a Jew because of his status, but after his conversion,
he may marry the woman he committed adultery with.
The Ri questioned Rabbenu Tam’s position based on several gemarot (Ketuvot 26b and
Megilla 15a), which imply that a woman who committed adultery with a gentile is forbidden to
her husband, the standard halakha in cases of adultery. If sexual relations with a gentile are
sufficient to render a prohibition to the husband, they should be sufficient to prohibit the gentile
adulterer to the adulteress! Evidently, then, relations with a gentile IS considered giluy arayot,
and the gentile should be forbidden to the adulteress even after he converts.
Some attempted to defend the Rabbenu Tam's position by asserting a Rabbinic prohibition
forbidding an adulteress to her husband, even though adultery with a gentile is not considered
halakhic relations and does not render a prohibition to marry the gentile adulterer. This position
was adopted by the Pnei Yehoshua in his comments to Ketuvot (3b). He does not consider why this
Rabbinic decree was not extended to the gentile bo’al (adulterer) as well.
A different solution emerges from the comments of the Maharik (responsa 167). Typically,
halakha recognizes two different forms of shogeg or unintentional sin. One form concerns an
individual who possesses deficient information, and the other concerns one with inaccurate
halakhic background. Not knowing the details of the act being committed or not knowing that a
particular act is forbidden are each equally defined as shogeg. The Maharik claims that absence
of halakhic knowledge that adultery is forbidden does not constitute shogeg for giluy arayot.
Although the violator may not have been aware that his conduct violated halakhic norms, it
certainly betrayed the trust of marriage. Aware that this conduct was morally decrepit and deceitful
towards a spouse renders the behavior meizid (intentional) and subject to punishment.
The Maharik addressed the categories of shogeg and meizid and the consequence for
punishment, but the same notions may affect the resultant prohibition to the husband of the
adulteress. Sexual relations with a gentile may not be considered halakhic bi’ah, but DOES indeed
constitute a betrayal of marriage, therefore generating a prohibition for an adulteress to rejoin her
husband. Regarding the gentile adulterer, no halakhic bi’ah has taken place and therefore no
residual prohibition to marry the adulteress exists after his conversion. Regarding the husband,
however, even though no bi’ah was performed, an act of betrayal occurred and that deceit is
sufficient to generate a prohibition to the husband.
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It appears as if this logic already emerged from a discussion in Sota (26b). The procedure
for indicting a sota woman is a two-staged process. Initially, a husband who has witnessed his
wife keeping private company with another man must register his opposition, or "kinuy." If she
persists and maintains private company with the alleged adulterer, she is subjected to the sota
ceremony, a ceremony which discloses the alleged adultery. The gemara questions the efficacy of
the sota process to uncover physical contact without sexual intercourse. What would occur if a
man registered disapproval and subsequently his wife enjoyed physical contact but not bi'ah?
Would such a woman be screened by the magical water of the Mikdash? After all, her husband
was opposed to this form of conduct, and her status as sota is a product of the husband's disapproval
regarding her sexual betrayal.
Presumably, the gemara is considering logic similar to that of the Maharik: independent of
the legal nature of bi'ah, sota status is a product of personal betrayal and can exist even in the
absence of classic bi'ah activity. It is possible that Rabbenu Tam adopted this logic to extend a
prohibition to the husband of a woman who committed adultery with a gentile even though, from
a purely halakhic standpoint, his bi'ah is not acknowledged and the gentile does not suffer a residual
prohibition typical to adulterers.
To be sure, the gemara in Sota is describing the formal process of a sota woman. Perhaps
this situation alone – in which the husband has already registered his anger and the woman has
disobeyed his will - applies even in the absence of classic bi'ah. It would then be difficult to extend
this principle to other cases.
Additionally, the gemara actually RETREATS from this position, claiming that only a
woman who committed actual sexual adultery would be impacted by the water. It is unclear why
the gemara rescinded this option. Did the gemara counter the Maharik's logic by claiming that
only actual bi'ah can trigger the sota status? If this were true, the gemara's conclusion would
debunk the Maharik and certainly challenge the aforementioned logic of Rabbenu Tam.
Alternatively, the gemara may have hesitated to expand the effects of the sota waters simply
because bodily contact - although forbidden – is not provocative enough to be considered a
BETRAYAL. Indeed, the sota status can emerge even in the absence of actual bi'ah under
conditions of betrayal - as the Maharik asserted and the Rabbenu Tam may have adapted - but the
type of bodily contact that may have occurred in the sota case is not inflammatory enough to create
that betrayal. Bi'ah with a gentile according to Rabbenu Tam or adultery without knowledge of
the biblical prohibition may each be sufficient to trigger various elements of sota status.
Many Rishonim disagreed with Rabbenu Tam's position, reasoning that a gentile bi'ah IS
considered halachic bi'ah. Despite this, some concurred with Rabbenu Tam's conclusion that upon
conversion the gentile is permitted to marry the Jewish adulteress.
49
The Rosh, in his comments to Ketuvot (3b), claims that giluy arayot will only impose a
prohibition upon the bo'el if he were not otherwise forbidden to woman. Prior to his conversion,
at the time of bi'ah, the gentile was forbidden to marry the Jewish woman; he is therefore immune
to the typical prohibition which affects the bo'el. Ultimately, the Rosh concurred with Rabbenu
Tam's pesak regarding the converted gentile adulterer, even though he disputed his logic regarding
a gentile bi'ah.
A different strategy is adopted by the Ritva. After his conversion, all the laws and statuses
of the gentile are RESET based upon the dictum of "ger shenitgayer ke-katan she-nolad dami" (a
convert is halachikally deemed as a newborn – without any residual punishments, or familial
bonds). Even though he may have been forbidden to marry as a typical adulterer, once he converts
his status changes and he can marry the woman in question. This position of the Ritva assumes
the application of the "renewal" principle in a very broad manner. It appears that the gemara in
Sanhedrin (71b) believed that the renewal of a convert's status would not affect human
administered penalties, even though it would exonerate Divinely supervised ones. This Ritva
assumes a comprehensive sweep for the principle. Thus, ultimately, the Ritva also ends up in full
agreement with Rabbenu Tam's ruling, despite the fact that he disputes the latter's provocative
logic.
Darkness Before the Dawn

Purim teaches us how to trust God even when engulfed in darkness and doubt.
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Dina Coopersmith writes:12
In the Purim story, when events seem to be reaching their final conclusion with Esther approaching
King Achashverosh to beg him to spare her people, a strange thing occurs. Esther invites the king
and Haman to a party, and at that party she invites them to another one! Only at the second party
does she name Haman as the villain about to destroy her people, thereby triggering the famous
"turnabout."
Why doesn't Esther spill the beans at the first party? Let her just get it over with! Why invite them
to yet another party and prolong the agony?
Esther was one smart lady. She must have had a strategy in mind.
"Where do you see a hint to Esther from the Torah? And behold, I will hide, really hide (haster
astir) my face from them on that day" (Talmud, Chulin 139b)
.
The name Esther comes from the root of "hester" – hiddenness. The Scroll of Esther is known for
its intense hiding of God's Presence, to the extent that God's Name isn't mentioned in it at all.
When reading the story, it is common to think that although on the surface things seemed quite
random, Mordechai and Esther knew all along that there was to be a miracle and that God was just
behind the scenes, orchestrating events into a beautiful tapestry of order and meaning.
But, upon deeper study, a different impression emerges. Even Esther and Mordechai could not see
God's Presence hidden amidst the darkness of events. They were engulfed in a terrible sense of
angst and bewilderment throughout the story, experiencing a distance from God which never fully
left them.
And every day, Mordechai walked before the court of the women's house (Esther 2:11).
12
https://www.aish.com/h/purim/t/har/48958886.html
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The only hint Mordechai had was the knowledge that if his virtuous, pure niece should have to go
through the defiling experience of living in a harem for a year and end up married to a hedonistic,
evil Persian king, something as terrible as this must have meant. This veiled sense of meaning is
the only hint he receives. No prophecy, just a hint.
Esther didn't even have the benefit of that hint.
DESPAIR AND DOUBT

When Mordechai beseeches Esther to approach Achashverosh and beg him to rescind the evil
decree of Haman, she's not at all convinced that it's a good plan. Esther doesn't feel God's support.
She certainly does not feel God's direct providence guiding events. According to the natural order
of things, one who approaches the king without an invitation is to be killed. How on earth can she
go in unannounced?
And I have not been called to the king these past thirty days. (Esther 4:11)
According to the Zohar (3:109), every time "the king" is mentioned without the name
Achashverosh, a deeper meaning can be inferred regarding the King of Kings – a.k.a. God.
Esther hadn't been called to God in thirty days – even though she was a prophetess, she hadn't
experienced the closeness of God's Presence in many days. She didn't feel the support of God in
this plan, didn't sense its rightness. This is her hesitation.
Mordechai, however, was positive that God wasn't about to abandon His people. Where Esther was
engulfed in darkness and doubt, Mordechai was certain that he had an approach which was
applicable in all cases:
If you are silent now, salvation and redemption will stand up for the Jewish People from
another place, and you and your father's family will be lost... (Esther 4:14)
God will save His children. No matter what. Even if it is undeserved. In the face of despair, all we
can do is trust God and He will deliver, as a direct consequence of our trust in Him. Mordechai
was teaching Esther a new way of thinking – a mode for a time of darkness. Just as when the Jewish
People, having left Egypt, were heading toward the sea and the Egyptians were following close
behind, God said to Moses: "Tell them to move! What are you crying out to Me for?" God taught
them this lesson for eternity: When faced with a seemingly insurmountable crisis – don't cry or
pray – just move – expect Me to deliver, walk into the sea with complete trust in Me – and when I
see that kind of faith, I will act in kind and I will save you.
Esther was an astute pupil. She still felt very distant from God:
52
But on an intellectual level, she had been given a directive: act as if you are sure of deliverance.
Go and expect a miracle – risk your life for the Jewish People. Trust is the key.
Esther went further than Mordechai in her understanding of the dire situation they were in and how
far the Jewish People were from correcting the wrong they had done. She realized that she must
formulate a plan to increase trust on the part of the entire Jewish nation. It would not be enough to
go in expecting to be saved on her merit alone.
ESTHER'S PLAN
Go and gather the Jewish People and fast for me: Don't eat or drink for three days and nights
... and then I will go to the king, and if I am lost, I am lost. (Esther 4:16)
The Jewish People were fasting and praying to God for three days, but Esther knew that deep down
they may still be lacking the necessary, complete trust in God:
What did Esther see that she invited Haman (to the party)? She said to herself: Lest they say,
"we have a sister in the palace," and thus be distracted from asking God for mercy.
(Talmud, Megillah 15b)
Esther decided to give her Jewish brethren the impression and resulting shock that she was in
cohoots with the enemy!
Imagine the devastating disappointment, after three days of fasting and praying for their "sister in
the palace" to succeed in revoking the decree, upon hearing that she had invited the evil Haman to
a party with the king, at which nothing was accomplished and only a second party was scheduled!
Queen Esther was socializing with their arch-enemy!
The outcome from the ensuing panic after this unexpected turn-of-events would be a loss of faith
in any other agent or savior, and the realization that only God could bring about their redemption.
No natural way out of this mess! In short, the Jewish people would attain a complete trust in God
with no distractions.
This was Esther's ingenious plan. At the first party, the time was not right for redemption, the
nation was undeserving of a turn-about. They had to reach a state of panic first and then pray
effectively! Only that night, while Achashverosh tossed and turned, and Haman gleefully planned
Mordechai's demise, did the Jewish People's cries reach a crescendo and penetrate the heavens.
The tide finally began to turn.
The next morning, having heard about Mordechai's elevation in status and his ride around town led
by Haman, Esther felt confident that they had done all they could, that the spiritual scales were
tipped in her favor and now her mission could readily be accomplished.
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ESTHER – IN DARKNESS UNTIL THE END
For Esther, there is a palpable sense that God is simply not there. Her personal tragedy does not
reach a completely happy end. Her sacrifice is evident and is made knowingly for the sake of the
Jewish People.
And if I am lost, I am lost – from this world and in the next. (Rashi)
The Talmud (Megillah 15a) tells us that by going to Achashverosh to beg for her people, Esther
was making a coherent choice to have a relationship with him, and thus, according to Jewish law,
was casting her lot – physically and spiritually – with a non-Jewish, evil man. No longer was there
any hope of returning to a normative Jewish lifestyle, a sanctified marriage (according to Oral
Tradition, Esther was married to Mordechai) and to a life of holiness.
For a Jew, this is the hardest thing to tolerate – the feeling of being cast away from God, even as
one intellectually knows that He is there and that the only choice is to act accordingly. And yet,
Esther willingly risked her life, placing her own trust in the Almighty, as well as bringing about
the repentance and subsequent redemption of the entire nation.
And the Jews had light and happiness and joy and honor. (Esther 8:16)
The lesson Esther taught us is one that resonates for eternity:
What is the lesson of this book that will never lose its relevance, even as all other troubles of the
Jewish nation will fade from memory?
Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, in his book Pachad Yitzchak, explains with a beautiful metaphor: There
are two ways one can recognize his friend in the dark. One way is to use a flashlight. The other
way is to get to know the friend by using other senses other than sight to recognize his presence.
When the sun comes up, the one who used his flashlight will find it no longer necessary and will
cast it aside. But the one who had to train himself in lieu of a flashlight, to sense his friend in other
ways, has acquired a deeper knowledge and understanding of his friend and the relationship, even
in daylight, will inevitably be enhanced as a result.
So, too, we – the Jewish People – have spent millennia in an effort to recognize God. Leaving
Egypt was a flashlight – the Ten Plagues and the miraculous events that followed taught the Jewish
People invaluable lessons about their King. And yet, when the sun comes up and the Messiah
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arrives, the revelation and clarity will be so bright that all holidays and writings commemorating
those events will dim in comparison.
Purim, on the other hand, was a story in which no light was switched on. The heroes of the hour
and the nation as a whole had to grope and stumble in the interminable darkness and slowly and
hesitatingly train themselves in a new approach to relating to God in such a time.
Trust in God as a loving father despite all odds, terrible decrees, undeserving people and a seeming
total absence of any spiritual presence, required training of such magnitude that it forever remained
in the consciousness of our people, and will stand us in good stead even in the time when the dawn
breaks and history reaches its final shining destiny.
"All the holidays will cease except Purim, as it says: And its memory will not cease from their
descendants" (Esther 9:28) (Midrash, Yalkut Shimoni, Mishlei 9)
The Coronation of Queen Esther, from the 1617 Scroll of Esther from Ferrara,
Italy.
Esther: Apocrypha
Carey A. Moore writes:11
In Brief
The Greek Additions to the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Esther were probably written over several
centuries and contradict several of the details from the Hebrew text. This version is explicitly
religious and contains several verses that do not appear in the Hebrew account. Generally, the
55
Additions are more dramatic and ultimately portray Esther as stereotypically weak and helpless,
even though parts of her weakness and femininity ultimately help save her people.
Structure of the Additions
The Greek version of the Hebrew Bible Book of Esther is designated Additions to Esther and
preserves many details of the Hebrew account. Its portrayal of Esther herself, however, is
appreciably different, primarily because of Additions C and D (Add Esth 13:8–14:19; 15:1–16).
The Additions to Esther consist of six extended passages (107 verses) that have no counterpart in
the Hebrew version. They are numbered as chaps 11–16, designated A–F, and added to the Hebrew
text at various places.
11
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/esther-apocrypha
Another important “addition” to Greek Esther is the mention of God’s name over fifty times. This
has the effect of making the story explicitly religious, in sharp contrast to the Hebrew text, which
does not mention God at all. The Additions, which probably were not composed at the same time
by the same person, can be dated to the second or first centuries B.C.E. because of their literary
style, theology, and anti-gentile spirit.
Esther’s Story in the Additions
After the death of her parents, Esther, daughter of Amminadav (Add Esth 2:7, 15; 9:29; not Avihail,
as in the Hebrew Esth 2:15), is raised by her cousin, Mordecai, son of Amminadav’s brother. Like
many beautiful virgins throughout the Persian Empire (Add Esth 2:7), Esther is compelled, by the
officials conducting the search for a new queen, to go to Susa to compete for the queenship (Add
Esth 2:8).
With the other virginal contestants, Esther undergoes an elaborate year-long beauty treatment (Add
Esth 2:12), designed to make a candidate for the queenship as desirable as possible. Even though
Esther is given preferential treatment by the eunuch in charge, including the promptest service,
special cuisine, the finest perfumes, seven choice maids, not to mention his good advice (Add Esth
2:9), she is wretchedly unhappy from the time of her arrival through the next five years of her
marriage (Add Esth 2:16, 3:7). Her wretchedness, described in detail in Addition C (Add Esth
14:15–18), is not even hinted at in the Hebrew account.
Addition C corrects all the “flaws” in the Hebrew version of Esther, which was rejected as
authoritative by some Jews even as late as the third century C.E. and was one of the last books to
enter the Jewish canon, presumably because of its “inexcusable” omissions. In Addition C, Esther
prays to “the Lord God of Israel” (Add Esth 14:3), mentions Israel’s “everlasting inheritance” (Add
Esth 14:5) and God’s holy altar and house in Jerusalem (Add Esth 14:9), and strictly observes
dietary laws (Add Esth 14:17). Moreover, Esther confesses her hatred for every alien, the pomp
and ceremony of her office, and her abhorrence at being married to a Gentile (Add Esth 14:15–
16). Despite her regal environment, Esther does not partake of non-kosher food or wine dedicated
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to idols (Add Esth 14:17). Later Jewish commentators credit her with eating only kosher food and
faithfully observing the Sabbath (megillah 13a). The rabbis, however, go even further than the
Greek version, claiming that Esther is one of the four most beautiful women in the world (Megillah
15a) and one of only seven female prophets of the Bible (Megillah 14b).
When Esther is finished praying and fasting, she dresses in her finest and, with two maids,
approaches the king’s throne unsummoned. What is described by three verses in the Hebrew (Esth
5:1–3) requires sixteen verses in Addition D (Add Esth l5:1–16). Unlike the Hebrew account, here
Esther is “frozen with fear” (Add Esth 15:5) and finds the king so terrifying that she falters, turns
pale, and collapses on her maid (Add Esth 15:7). Comforted by the king, who sweeps her up in his
arms, Esther says to him, “I saw you, my lord, like an angel of God, and my heart was shaken with
fear at your glory” (Add Esth 15:13). And then she faints again (Add Esth 15:15).
Portrayal of Esther in the Additions
This high drama in the Greek finds no parallel in the Hebrew, where Esther simply appears and is
immediately and favorably received. But the truly great difference in the Greek is that “Then God
changed the spirit of the king [from “fierce anger” in 15:7] to gentleness, and in alarm he sprang
from his throne and took her in his arms until she came to herself. He comforted her with soothing
words” (Add Esth 15:8). This is the high point in the Greek version, in contrast to Hebrew Esther
9, where the establishment of the festival of Purim represents the book’s climax. In the Greek
version, God, not Queen Esther, is the “hero.” In other words, just as Queen Vashti was demoted
by the king, so Queen Esther is, in effect, demoted by Addition D. In the Greek Additions, Esther
is a negative stereotype of female weakness and helplessness, although her fainting spells, like her
feminine allure, serve to change the king’s mind and lead to the defeat of the enemy.
Bibliography
Berlin, Adele. The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2001.
Fox, Michael V. “Introduction and Annotations.” In Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture, edited by
Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Schiffman, 97-110. Jewish Publication Society, 2013.
Meyers, Carol, General Editor. Women in Scripture. New York: 2000.
Moore, Carey A. “Esther, Additions to.” Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 2:626–633. New York: 1992.
Moore, Carey A. “Esther, Book of.” Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 2:633–643. New York: 1992.
Reinhartz, Adele. “The Greek Book of Esther.” Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe,
286–292. Kentucky: 1998.
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Esther the Queen, Hester Prynne, and The Scarlet Letter as Biblical
Commentary
58
Tzvi Sinensky writes:13
Megillat Esther tells us precious little about Esther’s inner world. We know about her early life:
the death of her parents, her maturation in Mordecai’s house, and how she is taken first to the
harem and then to the palace. We know of her accomplishments: how she found favor in the eyes
of those who saw her, approached Ahashveirosh, and became savior of the Jews. And the text does
drop a few hints as to her emotions and development: she shifted from passivity to proactivity, as
Mordecai’s challenge compelled her to make a fateful decision to throw in her lot with the Jewish
people. Yet we wonder: how did her orphaned childhood impact her? What was it like growing up
in Mordecai’s household? How did she process – if at all – the traumatic experience of being
coercively taken into Ahashveirosh’s harem, raped, and forced to marry the King? Did she
experience her rise to the throne with pride, shame, or ambivalence? The Megillah responds to our
inquiries into Esther’s emotional life with deafening silence.
This omission, of course, is to be expected from biblical narrative. As Erich Auerbach develops in
his magisterial essay “Odysseus’ Scar,” the protagonists’ internal experience is conspicuously
absent in the “biblical epic.” He offers the example of the binding of Isaac:
God gives his command in direct discourse, but he leaves his motives and his purpose unexpressed;
Abraham, receiving the command, says nothing and does what he has been told to do. The
conversation between Abraham and Isaac on the way to the place of sacrifice is only an interruption
of the heavy silence and makes it all the more burdensome. The two of them, Isaac carrying the
wood and Abraham with fire and a knife, “went together.” Hesitantly, Isaac ventures to ask about
the ram, and Abraham gives the well-known answer. Then the text repeats: “So they went both of
them together.” Everything remains unexpressed.
As is equally typical of biblical personalities, midrashim fill in some of these lacunae. In one place,
the Rabbis offer a graphic depiction of Esther’s anxiety upon hearing of Haman’s decree against
the Jews:
Then, following the midrashic viewpoint that Esther and Mordecai were married, the Talmud offers
an alternative interpretation of the phrase “If I perish, I perish”:
On this reading, Esther is profoundly anxious about not only her survival but also about the
eventual prohibition against her return to intimacy with Mordecai.
13
https://thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/esther-the-queen-hester-prynne-and-the-scarlet-letter-as-biblical-commentary/
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Finally, the Talmud teaches that upon deciding to enter the King’s throne room, Esther was nearly
seized by an internal paralysis precipitated by the departure of the divine presence:
Yet, even taking these aggadic statements together, we are left with a decidedly piecemeal portrait
of our protagonist’s state of mind.
And so, in seeking to account for Esther’s inner experience, we turn to an unexpected source:
Hester Prynne, the central character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 19th-century classic The Scarlet
Letter. Let us begin by briefly reviewing the novel’s plot.
Set in mid-17th century Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony (today Boston), The Scarlet Letter tells
the tale of Hester Prynne, whose much-older husband Roger Prynne has sent her ahead to the New
World. He disappears and is assumed to have died at sea. Having lost hope of his survival, Hester
falls into a secret relationship with the minister Arthur Dimmesdale, and ultimately gives birth to
a girl, whom she names Pearl. As punishment for her illicit relationship she is compelled by the
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magistrates to wear a scarlet letter “A,” standing for adulterer, across her chest. All but
excommunicated, she lives with Pearl on the margins of society, supporting herself through her
work as a seamstress. Despite her marginalization, Hester’s inherent goodness and acts of kindness
ultimately win over the hearts of the community members.
Meanwhile, her husband, who had in fact survived a shipwreck, takes on a new identity as Roger
Chillingworth, and comes to suspect that Dimmesdale may be the child’s father. Seeking revenge,
he becomes the pastor’s personal physician, eventually becoming his live-in caretaker.
Dimmesdale deteriorates, repeatedly harming himself in seeking to atone for his sins. He and
Hester finally decide to flee on a ship to Europe, but are forced to abandon the plan upon learning
that Chillingworth has intentionally booked passage on the same vessel. Dimmesdale confesses
publicly and dies on the town scaffold from self-flagellation. Pearl and Hester travel to Europe.
Pearl marries an aristocrat and remains in Paris. After some time, Hester returns to Boston, living
out the remainder of her life performing good deeds in the Colony.
A handful of scholars have noted the biblical precedents for Hawthorne’s characters.[1] Pearl’s
name is borrowed from multiple passages in the book of Matthew (13:45-6). Chillingworth, whose
all-consuming hatred for Dimmesdale ultimately devours himself, has much in common with
Haman, who was hanged on a gallows of his making. Dimmesdale might be a stand-in for
Mordecai, another religious leader with whom Esther may have had an intimate relation.
Most obvious is Hester, whose name is nearly identical to that of Esther, and whose life experience
shares numerous parallels with that of her biblical namesake. Both are beautiful, strong women
who are compelled to live in lonely environments, distanced from their communities. They are
unhappily married to older men, clinging to secrets whose revelation is essential to the unfolding
of their narratives. Both overcome profound adversity, retain an abiding commitment to their core
values in the face of hostile societal opposition, and come to be deeply respected by the people of
their communities.
Critic Ariel Silver Clark has further noted the parallels between Esther standing before
Ahashveirosh to plead for her nation, and Hester’s (successful) petition to Governor Bellingham
to allow Pearl to continue living with her, as well as Hester’s royal bearing as strongly resembling
the character of Queen Esther.[2] As Clark puts it, “The more time I spent with Hawthorne, the
more I saw the type of Esther in his work. In The Scarlet Letter, the type of Esther is a thinly veiled
type of redemption through the female” (viii).
Why does Hawthorne cast Hester as Esther? One critic concludes that Hawthorne simply sought
to destabilize the meaning of the biblical text. Just as the scarlet letter “A” carries multiple and
shifting meanings, so too does the biblical text, which is subject to regular reinterpretation, leading
Hawthorne to “reread” Esther as Hester. Another possibility is that Hawthorne suggests that while
the Puritans saw Hester as an embodiment of sin, in fact she was as pure as the biblical heroine
Esther.
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But these interpretations fall well short of the mark. In reading Hester as Esther, Hawthorne sheds
light not only on the character of Hester, as well as the Puritans’ hypocrisy, but also on the book
of Esther. For we may identify four outstanding aspects of Hester’s inner world. First, due to events
not entirely in her control, Hester suffers immensely. Second, relatedly, she experiences an
extended period of communal censure. Third, her kindness is an essential part of her personality,
and ultimately wins over the members of her community. Fourth and above all, she draws her
resilience from remaining true to her own internal ethical compass, refusing the temptation to
assimilate the values of the society around her.
In drawing such a strong parallel to Esther, Hawthorne suggests that we should see Esther in the
same light. Esther too experiences tremendous suffering, from the death of her parents to her
traumatic experiences in the harem and palace, to living at the margins of her community. Second,
the comparison to Esther suggests that Esther too was met with significant criticism by members
of her community – or, at the very least, was wracked by internal doubts as to what others thought
of her. Third, in winning others over with her good will and deeds, Esther distinguished herself
with kindness. Fourth and most important, Esther too was driven by immense internal conviction.
While it was Mordecai who urged her to approach the King, Esther made the decision on her own.
It was at her initiative that the Jewish community fasted, and she independently hatched the
ingenious plot of Haman and Ahashveirosh’s feasts. And she, along with Mordecai, established
Purim as a holiday.
Historical context clinches this reading of Hawthorne’s Esther. Hawthorne read Cotton Mather’s
Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion, a conduct manual in which Esther is one of the biblical
heroines adduced as a model of proper behavior.[3] Mather’s guide was highly influential, and was
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widely read throughout the 19th century. Yet for Mather, Esther was the ideal woman inasmuch as
she supported her husband Ahashveirosh (!) even as she urged him to improve his character.
Hawthorne, alongside other 19th-century authors, broke from Ornaments, transforming Esther-as-
Hester into an independent-minded, strong-willed, creative, elegant woman who was willing to
break convention in order to do what was right. In so doing, Hawthorne offers us a
threedimensional view of Esther’s rich inner world.
[1] For a list, see Matthew Gartner, “’The Scarlet Letter’ and the Book of Esther: Scriptural Letter and Narrative Life,”
Studies in American Fiction, 23:2 (Autumn 1995).
[2] Ariel Clark Silver, The Book of Esther and the Typology of Female Transfiguration in American Literature (Rowman
and Littlefield, 2018).
[3] Jacob Mason Spencer, “Hawthorne’s Magnalia: Retelling Cotton Mather in the Provincial Tales,”, unpublished Harvard
Dissertation, 2015.
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13
13
Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought(Vol. 45, Issue 4)
“Go, assemble all the Jews who live in Shushan, and fast in my behalf; do not eat or drink for
three days, night or day. I and my maidens will observe the same fast. Then I shall go to the
king, though it is contrary to the law; and if I am to perish, I shall perish!”
Esther 4:6
RASHI
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Agunah Day: 3 times public outrage rescued chained women
These stories prove the Rabbinate can be pressured into reversing rulings that trap women in
marriages long over. Now we know what we have to do
Susan Weiss writes:14
Queen Esther, the heroine of the Purim story, succeeds in averting genocide for the Jewish people,
but there is one person she cannot save: herself. Our tragic heroine remains trapped in an unwanted
marriage for the rest of her days. The Fast of Esther, which falls the day before Purim, is therefore
commemorated as Agunah Day. An agunah (plural: agunot) is a woman held in marital captivity
by a husband who refuses to release her with a religious writ of manumission, known as a get.
14
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-tale-of-three-agunot/
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To those of us fighting for agunot, Esther’s choice in calling for a public fast before she stood up
to state power is not incidental. It is strikingly strategic and has become more instructive than ever.
Like Esther, we see today that women’s struggle for justice directly hinges on communal solidarity.
Three recent agunah cases demonstrate how critical a role that public support plays.
The first case is the matter of Shira Isakov (her real name), whose husband almost hacked her to
death, literally, and would have succeeded but for her screams and the kindness of neighbors. After
the murder attempt, Israeli doctors and dentists rallied to reconstruct Shira’s body and mouth. Shira
sued for her release, a get, in rabbinic court. Her husband refused to free her. A media uproar
ensued and the public erupted in fury. In response, the rabbinic court scrambled to Shira’s aid,
making a great show of flexing its muscles to secure a get for Shira and inculpability for itself in
just a matter of days.
The second case is the matter of Sarah (not her real name). I represented Sarah in one of the first
cases I brought against recalcitrant husbands for damages for get refusal. We won. In 2004, Judge
Menahem HaCohen of the Jerusalem Family Court awarded Sarah significant damages for the 11
years that her husband had refused to release her from marital captivity. She collected the award,
but not her freedom. Out of the hundreds of women who have employed this legal strategy, Sarah
is the only one for whom the damage suit did not yield a get. To this very day, Sarah’s husband
stands firm in his refusal to release her.
Recently, Sarah again approached the state rabbinic courts for help — it has been 30 years (!) since
she first requested a get. Instead of insisting that her husband release her, the court ordered Sarah
to pay her husband all the money she had collected as a result of the family court ruling, plus
interest and adjustments for cost of living. Sarah’s husband hadn’t even asked for the money back;
he still wants reconciliation, shalom bayit. Again, a media firestorm was operative in changing the
rabbinic court’s tune. Days after the story hit the press, the High Rabbinic Court dropped its
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demand for Sarah to return the damage award and, for the first time in 30 years, ordered the
husband to give the get or face sanctions.
The third case concerns an Ethiopian couple who completed their get ceremony in the rabbinic
court, yet the rabbinic court refused to issue them a legal certificate of divorce afterward. In this
case, the problem was not the husband’s unwillingness to release his wife. Rather, the rabbinic
court itself decided, after the fact, to open an investigation into their Jewish status and was
withholding the divorce certificate until they re-proved their Jewishness. There is no civil marriage
or divorce in Israel, and the only way to legally end a marriage is via a divorce certificate issued
by the state religious courts. Thus, despite the fact that the rabbinic court had already declared the
woman religiously divorced during the get ceremony, they were still married, according to Israeli
law. As a result, she could not separate her legal status from her husband, receive single-parent
benefits, remarry, and more.
For months, the rabbinic court refused to budge. Exasperated, the couple took their story to the
Kan broadcasting agency, who televised their ordeal. An outraged public made their story go viral
and the following day, the rabbinic court released their divorce certificate. A similar incident
occurred last summer with a client of ours, a woman from the former Soviet Union. In that case, a
mere two weeks after my organization, the Center for Women’s Justice, filed a Supreme Court
petition on her behalf and publicized her story in the press, the rabbinic court decided to release
the divorce certificate they had been withholding for two years.
While I can certainly be cynical about the fact that the rabbinic court has outsourced its conscience
to the public, these recent cases actually give me hope. Gone is the pretense that the powerful will
correct themselves as long as we wait patiently and unobtrusively. No. Our salvation will come
from us, our action, and our solidarity. This is the lesson of Agunah Day and the Fast of Esther,
and this is what Esther knew when she rallied all of the Jews of Shushan on her behalf before she
confronted power. This is what we know when we continue to engage the public as our partners
for women’s justice.
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‘Mi She-Berakh’ prayer for agunot15
YAEL LEVINE writes:16
Ta’anit Ester (The Fast of Esther) which falls on the 13th of Adar (this year on the 13th day of Adar
2) was established in 1990 by ICAR – The International Coalition for Agunah Rights – as
15
The Hebrew version of the prayer was subsequently reprinted in the monumental Sefer ha-Shabbat, edited by Yonadav Kaploun
and issued by Yediot Aharonot in 2011.
16
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/mi-she-berakh-prayer-for-agunot-448036
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International Agunah Day. The main purpose was to raise awareness of the plight of agunot (women
“chained” to their marriage) and work toward solving the problem. Recently, for instance, the
unfortunate case of an agunah here in Israel, the wife of Dr. Oded Gez, surfaced, and received
widespread coverage in the press and in the social media.
In the summer of 2006, I composed a “Mi Sheberach” prayer for agunot in Hebrew, entitled “Mi
she-Berakh Prayer for Agunot and Women who are Denied a Writ of Divorce (mesorvot get).” The
prayer, first published in the De’ot journal prior to Purim 2007, circulated also on the Internet. It
gained acceptance in a short while, and has since come to be recited in synagogues throughout the
Jewish world on the Shabbat preceding the fast of Esther. A suitable place for its recitation is
following the “Mi Sheberach” prayer for IDF soldiers. The prayer is likewise recited on Ta’anit
Ester itself.
The Hebrew version of the prayer was subsequently reprinted in the monumental Sefer ha-Shabbat,
edited by Yonadav Kaploun and issued by Yediot Aharonot in 2011 (p. 260).
The prayer is based for the most part upon biblical, talmudic and midrashic sources, and to a small
extent on later sources.
Following is my own English translation of the prayer, published for the first time. It is a free
rendering of the Hebrew, preserving all of its main elements.
The Agunah Prayer
He Who Blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and our foremothers Sarah,
Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, may He remember and consider favorably all the women who are
agunot and who are denied a writ of divorce, help, shield and save them, and release them from
their confinement to grant them a new life this day.
God who answers in times of trouble, who redeems and rescues in times of woe, may He answer
the women who are bound in living widowhood, hear their outcries, and nullify the intentions of
those husbands who refuse to give their wives a writ of divorce. For He is the God of all flesh,
nothing is too wondrous for Him.
Our sisters, the daughters of Israel, who are in distress and bondage, may the Omnipresent One
have mercy upon them, and deliver them from distress to relief, and from darkness to light.
May God who releases prisoners from their chains, place in the hearts of the judges of Israel the
spirit of wisdom and insight, the spirit of counsel and valor, the spirit of devotion and fear of
God, that they may free from their fetters all the agunot and women who have been refused a
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writ of divorce by their husbands, so that the Divine Presence will rise from her dust, since
whoever frees one agunah it is as though he built one of the ruins of supernal Jerusalem.
And may the biblical verse be fulfilled in them, “And call upon Me on a day of distress, I will
rescue you and you will honor Me.”
May the King of Kings stand at their side, exalt them, bring them recovery and healing, and may
they endure no more despair and broken heartedness.
And may they merit to establish faithful homes in Israel.

Because this entire holy congregation is praying on their behalf; now, speedily, and at a near
time, and let us say,
Amen.
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Get Busters
Social media vigilantism comes to Brooklyn’s historically private Syrian Jewish community
ESTHER LEVY-CHEHEBAR writes:17
It’s 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday night in March and Ghostbusters’ eponymous hit song is blaring from
a loudspeaker in front of Aaron David Ohayon’s home on East 5th Street in Brooklyn. A boisterous
17
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/get-busters-agunot
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crowd is gathered in protest. Some hold up signs. Among them are the slogans: “Free Esther,”
“Unchain Esther,” “Give Her the Get.”
As the titular song escalates in all of its ’80s glory, a man rises above the rest, his white megaphone
pointed toward the sky. It’s Murray Betesh, the rally’s organizer.
“WHO YA GONNA CALL?” He shouts.
The crowd dutifully replies: “GET BUSTERS!”
Fired up by a fast-moving social campaign on Instagram, the crowd is here to drag Ohayon, who
is accused of refusing to give his wife of 25 years a get. Ohayon and Esther have been civilly
divorced for four years, but without the traditional divorce document granted by a husband to his
wife, a Jewish court will not recognize the civil divorce. As a result, Esther has been rendered an
agunah—a woman who, by definition, is chained to her husband and cannot remarry.
A man suspected to be Ohayon peeks out from behind a curtain.
“That’s him!” Someone shouts.
The crowd begins to solemnly chant “we see you” over and over again. An egg is lobbed at the
window. Eventually, one of Ohayon and Esther’s own children gets on a speaker to claim that his
father was physically and emotionally abusive. Ohayon’s phone number is publicized and we are
encouraged to use it.
This stretch of Brooklyn is not exactly known for political protest. And yet, in the past week or so,
the issue of get refusal has generated a tidal wave inside the Syrian Sephardic Jewish community’s
proverbial walls. Indeed, the Ohayon rally was one of about a dozen that have recently popped up
in the Midwood area of Brooklyn, drawing attendees from all walks of the community—mothers,
yeshiva high school students, professionals, etc.
It began at the start of March with a fundraiser promoted by important community foundations and
rabbis, such as the Kassin Chesed Fund and Rabbi Eli Mansour. The campaign bulletin on the
Chesed Fund website read: “Help free Elizabeth! A young woman in our community who has been
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refused a Get for almost four years and needs her life back!” A picture of a young smiling woman
accompanied the appeal. Interest in her situation began with this fundraiser but only truly
ballooned when community Instagram influencer Abe Manopla (@mexicanpacino0528) shared
her story on March 9. Manopla’s account identifies him as a “Sephardic Jew. Blogger. Seeking the
truth.”
Elizabeth’s cause struck a communal nerve and catapulted people to the streets in protest. Chants
of “Free Elizabeth” could be heard on the corner of Ocean Parkway and Kings Highway.
Within a few days, a viral social media campaign exploded in the community’s small corner of
the platform.
On March 11, word began to spread of another get refuser. Mr. Dibo “Jeff” Khafif stood accused
of withholding his wife Evett’s get for 17 years even as he went ahead and remarried (there are
legal loopholes that men can manipulate to get remarried even without giving their first wives a
get). Manopla broadcast live on Instagram with Evett and her daughter as they counted the years
blighted by Khafif’s decision. Ten minutes later, there were 500 people outside of Khafif’s home.
New accounts like @free_the_chained, @freesyagunot and @get_busters rapidly gained followers
as they communicated what quickly became known as the “Agunah crisis” to the community at
large. T-shirts adorned with the victims’ names were manufactured and already on the backs of
the movement’s supporters. And the withholding husbands became household names on Instagram
in a matter of minutes: Like Naftali Sharabani, accused of being a get refuser for 10 years, or Joey
Mochon, for 17 years. Names of neighboring get refusers popped up like pinned locations on
Google maps.
In many ways, the ‘agunah’ crisis feels like a proxy for other communal tensions that have
simmered beneath the surface for years.
In a matter of days, the campaign did what longtime agunot have been trying to do for years, their
voices either drowned out or simply ignored. A day after his name was publicized, Khafif’s
employer took to Instagram to say that he had been fired. Soon thereafter, he was reportedly
arrested on charges of abuse after a disturbing audio recording circulated among the community.
A few days after that, his wife, Evett, was granted her get after 17 years. A photo op of her husband
granting her a get soon followed. Live videos from these occasions showed a palpable sense of
joy. Comment sections were ablaze with ecstatic emoji and congratulations. More than once, a
user pointed out that another staged rally was lagging and needed bodies. “Get here! Celebrate
later!”
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Manopla joked. Prior to becoming the de facto face for the cause,
he used his Instagram account primarily to rate pizza. Now he watched in astonishment as scenes
from protests played out on his phone. Since his original post, Manopla has been streaming hours
each day with community guests in spectacles that fall somewhere between Dr. Phil and Howard
Stern (Manopla’s professed hero). As views climbed in the thousands, Manopla has been criticized
for inviting women who have been refused a get and also men who have withheld them “to give
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their side of the story.” There have been disputes over who deserves credit for what and videos
accused of glorifying men who bowed to pressure and gave the get. As a friend commented, “These
gets are great but these gets are long overdue. It’s like celebrating me getting dressed today.”
The agunah crisis isn’t new, nor is it unique to this community. What is notable is the impassioned
community response, the societal pressure and the viral social media crusade against these men.
The agunot issue inflamed this community in ways that other issues have not, in part because
marriage and family life are the bedrock of our social pillars. More specifically, it is the women
who are tasked with ensuring the stability, tradition, and essence of a Syrian home. We have a
word for this: Suffeh; the way of life. To see it compromised is devastating, but until recently there
was no way to coalesce our feelings—and certainly no way to express them, all together and
publicly. In the past month, women voiced their fury both on and off screen as dozens of get
refusers were uncovered, their names splayed across Instagram in bold type.
One former community agunah who asked to remain anonymous likened the experience to being
in jail. “It feels like you are the living dead,” she told me. “I was alive on this earth but my soul
was dead. Slowly after I got the get I started to feel alive again. It’s a very deep feeling.”
The stakes continued to rise. On March 12, following community pressure, the rabbinate of the
flagship Syrian synagogue, Shaare Zion, issued a new policy: Any person who fails to issue a get
within 10 days following the delivery of a rabbinical request shall be prohibited from entering the
congregation’s facilities for any reason. The ban includes services, classes, and social functions.
Being barred from the zenith of Sephardic spaces is a pointed step toward excommunication. For
a member of a tightknit community, there are few punishments more severe.
Still, a “rabbinical request” in this case means a request by 75% of the congregation’s senior rabbis.
And as many pointed out, more could be done to empower women who often enter marriages with
little to no understanding of how the Jewish divorce process works. For example, promoting
education of the Halachic prenuptial agreement of Beth Din of America. The Halachic prenup,
which has been normalized in many Ashkenazi modern Orthodox communities, has been hailed
as a solution to prevent most agunah cases. It is a legal agreement by which a recalcitrant
husband—if the Beth Din deems him so—must continue to pay his wife daily spousal support until
he gives her the get. The Sephardic Community Alliance (SCA) has partnered with the Beth Din
of America to educate the community on it as a critical option to alleviate this situation.
Many also pointed out that while much activism has resulted in solving high profile agunah cases,
there is a greater systemic problem at play: Women are not given seats at the table in the rooms
where these cases are resolved and communal policy considered. Photo ops of rabbis and laymen
sitting around tables upon which gets had been given spread on Instagram and WhatsApp groups.
“ANOTHER AGUNAH FREED THANKS TO THE PUBLIC PRESSURE CAMPAIGN,” one read.
But as a commenter observed, “Another agunah released BH. But another man in a photo of men
celebrating. Another photo where women are invisible ... This is at the heart of the problem.”
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The use of social media as a prosecutorial tool raises other issues as well. Viral hashtag campaigns
are vulnerable to misinformation and often favor binary thinking over nuance. A handful of men
have been wrongfully accused and more than once, a man was said to have given a get when in
fact he had not. A woman who has had close contact with many of these cases stressed that while
the crisis is dire, each situation is unique. “There are multiple sides to every story, and that gets
missed on social media,” she said. “Many times the get is used as a weapon for other things.” For
example, leverage in a bitter custody battle. But when a horror reaches your feed, it’s human to
want to see the swift fall of the ax rather than wait for the careful deliberation that many complex
issues deserve. Hopefully, justice eventually follows, but it won’t look the same every time.
“I would love to see everybody use a little more discretion. Let it be more informative and less
reality TV,” said Dina Kraiem, who has been rallying behind the scenes for years in support of
community agunot. “But that’s also what keeps people watching. You have to take the good with
the bad. There is no one way.”
Which raises the question: What is the responsibility of the community personalities, who have in
effect, become the public faces of this cause? While some hail the Instagram Live videos as heroic,
others are disturbed to see the details of private lives aired so publicly. One woman described
watching Manopla’s interviews as “magnetic, like watching a train wreck. You know it’s a disaster
but you also know it’s important and you can’t look away.” Another said: “I keep finding myself
somewhere on this line between thinking this is all out of control and needs to stop, and that this
Instagram Live phenomenon is the only reason any of this is even happening.”
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Get Detective: Meet the Elusive, Intrepid P.I. Who Frees Chained
Jewish Women
BATYA UNGAR-SARGON WRITES:18

Some social media community personalities are beginning to think about these questions. “We took
a page from the world’s playbook,” Murray Betesh told me, referring to the art of the social media
protest. Still, Betesh seems to understand well the dangers of playing with this art: “Before I
publicize a case, I verify that it’s real. I speak to people close. I speak to rabbis. I would never want
to embarrass or promote the wrong person.”
But as the cases began to mount and the intensity both online and offline grew, another issue began
to creep into the narrative. On the one hand, stories were developing of men from other
communities who heard about what was going on and preemptively granted their wives a get for
fear that they would be “outed” on social media. But what if a get refuser doubled down on
withholding, citing the vitriol of the protesters as the cause? While flawed, the concerned logic
seemed to go something like this: I was hated before, but now I’m really hated, so why should I
even give the get? The number of confronted men who have given the get outweighs those who
have not, but after protests reached a fever pitch, some began to worry about their long-term
efficacy. Indeed, certain observers noted that the strategy overlooks a crucial pathological element
involved in get refusal: Refusal is a power struggle and in itself—a form of abuse. I spoke to one
agunah who didn’t seek a get for two years, because simply asking for it would ensure that her
husband wouldn’t give it.
“Something about the rioting makes me uncomfortable,” Manopla admits. “It can cheapen the
movement, which is 100% about the women and supporting them.”
One rally I attended felt like being in a pressure cooker one millisecond after release. I felt
excitement and energy, but also like we were a bunch of little atoms buzzing about the ether, glad
to be united by a cause but mainly, together. Or, as one attendee aptly put it: “They should open up
a Starbucks here and make some money.”
In many ways, the agunah crisis feels like a proxy for other communal tensions that have simmered
beneath the surface for years. On March 17, Manopla, encouraged by commenters, pivoted to
another hotbed issue: the tuition crisis. Laments about the price of attending yeshiva poured in as
various guests debated solutions. Another get win engendered a conversation about the range of
18
https://www.tabletmag.com/contributors/batya-ungarsargon
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/get-detective-jewish-divorce
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cultural and ethnic backgrounds within the Syrian community and the broader Sephardic one. The
sheer volume of attention and passion around these topics signals something deeper at play here.
To many, having these conversations in the public square feels akin to “airing
out your dirty laundry.” As one community member told me, “There is no law and order anymore.”
Others feel relieved to be openly discussing things that have plagued people for years. Perhaps
then the true transformation here is not what people are saying, but how they are saying it.
Still, many of the most influential discussions tend to be had in private, absent the noise and
distraction on social media.
“They’re here, doing one as we speak,” said Alice Adjmi in her home, which over the course of
the week has been used for countless negotiations and quite a few get victories. Together with her
husband, Harry, they’ve been facilitating discussions and providing a space to solve cases that have
lagged for years. A few moments later, I receive a screenshot of a post by #freethechained. It reads:
“Michelle is free!”
“I’m deeply thankful that these women are being freed,” Emily Labaton, a community educator,
told me. “But to me, the goal of this movement is about getting to a place where agunot do not
need Instagram accounts to whip up a frenzy of public opinion in order to be free.”
When asked what he wants out of this movement once the fire dies down, Manopla said: “I want
people to respect our leaders again. People are looking to our Rabbinate to enact change.” Manopla
adds that he was encouraged by community rabbis to keep going, to continue giving these women
a platform on his account. “It’s the women in our community who really spearheaded this
movement. They saw my first video about a young girl [Elizabeth] and realized that it could’ve
been any one of them. They just went nuts.”
In fact, the agunah firestorm has triggered more honest conversations on a broader range of
subjects—including the wider issue of Jewish divorce, women’s rights within the context of
Orthodox Judaism, and the spectrum of emotional abuse. There have been countless Zoom panels
and Instagram Live appearances in the past few weeks. “The kids are watching,” Manopla said. So
too are our leaders, who appear motivated to moderate the sea change occurring beneath us. As
Mrs. Labaton put it on a Zoom SCA panel on March 15, “talking about divorce does not lead to
more divorce. If you can start accessing support in the beginning of the divorce, it can be a much
healthier and calm process.” It’s a matter of shifting the narrative. “For example, if you have a
parenting coach who can talk with optimism about shared custody, then it’s not as terrifying for
people.”
The picket signs will eventually bear a new cause. Sephardic Instagram will inevitably move on,
populated once more by Passover ads and split family rentals in Gravesend. But one of the beauties
of community is living with a collective memory—and many hope it won’t forget the events of the
past week.
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“At the end of every get ceremony the rabbi essentially says, ‘go on and rebuild,’” Labaton said.
“The Torah believes in that. And the mitzvah of get is a recognition by the Torah that life isn’t
perfect. In the face of life’s imperfection, we can rebuild. The Torah wants us to rebuild.”
When the Talmud Offers Close Readings of Sacred Fictions

Antic embellishments, like Esther being good in bed, help Talmudic rabbis to more fully
explicate the text’s divine meaning
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Adam Kirsch writes:19
One of the great surprises of the Talmud, for me, has been discovering the way the rabbis read the
Bible. It would be natural to assume that a contemporary secular reader, unbound by pious
traditions or the belief in divine inspiration, reads the Bible with a greater freedom than someone
who believes it to be holy writ. And in a sense that is true: Today we are free to interpret the text
in human terms, to see miracles as metaphors, or to recognize the tales of King David as
propaganda for the Judahite monarchy.
19
https://www.tabletmag.com/contributors/adam-kirsch
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But the rabbis, it turns out, had a different and much greater kind of freedom. To them, every letter
and word of the Bible was put there by God, which meant that every letter and word had a meaning.
If the same word appeared in a verse in Exodus and again in a verse in Chronicles, then there must
be some essential relationship between the two verses that the reader was meant to discover. And
the rabbinic reader of the Bible was not even bound by the plain sense of the words: He was free
to invent episodes, multiply motives, and add characters, if the result seemed to him a fuller
explication of the text’s divine meaning.
This week’s Daf Yomi reading, which brought us to the end of Chapter 1 of Tractate Megilla,
offered a master class in this kind of midrashic reading. Over seven pages of Gemara, the rabbis
engaged in a chapter-by-chapter, sometimes line-by-line analysis of the Book of Esther, after
which the tractate is named. The result is practically a rewriting of the Esther story, full of new
details that seem to spring from nowhere but the minds of the rabbis themselves yet are treated as
deep truths that the text must have contained from the beginning. At times euphemistic and
puritanical, at times surprisingly frank, the rabbis show how they take the ambiguous story of
Esther and assimilate it to their own worldview.
The analysis begins on Megilla 10b with the very first word of the Book of Esther: vayehi, “And
it came to pass.” “This matter is a tradition from the members of the Great Assembly: Anywhere
that the word vayehi is stated, it is a term of nothing other than grief,” the Gemara explains. It goes
on to list a dozen or so instances of the word from all over the Bible—demonstrating the rabbis’
amazing knowledge of the text, in an age before concordances (or search engines). Vayehi turns
up in the Tower of Babel story, in the story of Hannah and Samuel, and in the story of Saul and
David, each time in close proximity to some bad news: The Tower is destroyed, Hannah is unable
to conceive, Saul turns against David.
Yet the rabbis know the Bible so well that they are also able to come up with plenty of
counterexamples. Isn’t it true that vayehi is also used in connection with joyful events like the
dedication of the Tabernacle, and Jacob’s first meeting with Rachel? This seems to negate the
tradition “from the members of the Great Assembly,” but Rav Ashi rescues it in a characteristically
Talmudic fashion, by revising it. Vayehi on its own can introduce good or bad events, but Vayehi
bimei— “And it came to pass in the days of”—is always an ominous introduction, as it is in the
book of Esther.
Clearly, for the rabbis, much depends upon individual words, and they go on to give more
examples. At the banquet that opens the story of Esther, Ahasuerus is said to display “the riches
of his glorious kingdom and the honor of his majestic greatness.” The Hebrew here uses two words,
kevod and tiferet, which—as Rabbi Yosei bar Chanina notices—are also used in the Book of
Exodus to describe the garments of the priests. This is more than a coincidence, or even an allusion:
It is, to Yosei, proof that Ahasuerus actually wore the garments of the Jewish high priest, which
had been pillaged from Jerusalem at the time of the Babylonian conquest.
Soon the rabbis move on from semantic questions to a more important one. Esther tells the story
of a barely averted genocide: Why, the Gemara asks, were the Jews of that generation deserving
of such punishment? What was their sin? One opinion is that the Jews were guilty of participating
in Ahasuerus’ feast, which meant that they ate non-kosher food. But if so, surely only the Jews of
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Shushan, the capital, deserved punishment since the Jews of other provinces couldn’t have attended
the feast. Perhaps, then, the Jews’ sin was that they bowed down before a Babylonian idol. But if
they committed such a grave sin, why did God forgive them? Simeon bar Yochai has an answer:
The Jews weren’t sincere in their worship of the idol but only did it to obey the king; just so, God
didn’t sincerely intend to punish them but only acted angry. This is a good example of how the
Talmud, in seeking to solve exegetical problems that it created itself, can come up with answers
that seem to traduce the larger point of the story. If we are to believe that the whole ordeal of the
Book of Esther was a kind of play-acting—a divine pretense of punishment for a pretended sin—
then the story loses much of its significance and drama.
When Esther herself enters the scene, the rabbis have a lot of interpretive work to do. If the Jews
were being punished for eating non-kosher food, we might ask, what about Esther herself? Surely
in all the time she was living in Ahasuerus’ palace, concealing her Jewishness, she must have been
eating the same Persian food as everyone else. But to the rabbis, such a transgression by a heroic
Jew is inconceivable, so they find a way around it. When the text says, “And [the king] advanced
her and her maids to the best place in the house of the women,” Rav assures us that this means
“that he fed her food of the Jews.” And if you wonder how Esther could observe Shabbat in the
royal palace, Rava has the answer: Esther had seven maids, and she “would count the days of the
week by them,” so she always knew when Shabbat was.
These ritual transgressions are cleverly elided, but there’s no way around the glaring sexual
irregularity at the heart of the Esther story. She was, after all, used as a concubine by a gentile king.
Oddly, in fact, the rabbis heighten Esther’s transgression by declaring, quite arbitrarily, that she
was not actually Mordecai’s ward, as the text states, but his wife. This is accomplished by adding
a letter to the word bat, “daughter”—as in, “Mordecai took her for his own daughter”— and thus
changing it to the word bayit, “house,” a euphemism for wife. Exactly why the rabbis wanted to
do this is unclear to me; perhaps they simply felt that the story would be more satisfying if it
involved a romance between Esther and Mordecai.
This leads to the highly irregular conclusion that Esther was sleeping with both Ahasuerus and
Mordecai at the same time: “She would arise from the lap of Ahasuerus, immerse herself in a ritual
bath, and sit in the lap of Mordecai.” Later, in Megillah 15a, we hear some extenuation of this
behavior from Rabbi Abba, who says that Esther slept with Ahasuerus only “under compulsion.”
Yet the Gemara also makes clear that Esther was, not to put too fine a point on it, good in bed. The
reason why Ahasuerus loved her more than his other concubines, Rav says, is that “if he wanted
to taste in her the taste of a virgin, he tasted it, and the taste of a non-virgin, he tasted it.”
It is with the character of Haman that the Talmud takes greatest pleasure inventing new details, all
of them disparaging. It’s not enough that Haman hated Mordecai; the reason why he hated him,
we read, is that Haman used to be Mordecai’s slave. To rub it in, the Talmud says he wasn’t even
a good slave—“and he was called: the slave who was sold for a loaf of bread.” And when the tables
are turned and Haman is made to lead Mordecai on horseback through the streets of Shushan, the
rabbis gleefully refine the humiliation. Haman also had to cut Mordecai’s hair, they say, reducing
him to the lowly status of “a bathhouse attendant and a barber”—fitting, because “Haman was the
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barber of the village of Kartzum for twenty-two years.” (Why the village of Kartzum? The Talmud
doesn’t mention its source for this detail.)
Then, to make matters even worse, Haman’s own daughter—thinking that the man on horseback
was her father, and the man leading him Mordecai—went up to the roof of her house and dumped
a chamberpot full of feces on Haman’s head. When she realized what she had done, she fell off the
roof and died. There is something antic, and true to the spirit of Purim, about the way the rabbis
pile on the insults. Clearly, midrash was not just a way of honoring the text but a way for the rabbis
to express their own emotion and imagination. Modern Jewish literature, perhaps, has its roots in
this kind of sacred fiction.
Robed in Malkhut: The Hidden and Revealed in Esther (and Us)
When like Queen Esther, we lose ourselves in beauty or in purpose, it is divine

Malkhut asserting itself. And in that state, there is much we can do.
Rabbi Irwin Keller writes:20
20
https://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/robedinmalkhut/
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As one of the few rabbis serving a Reconstructionist congregation who can also boast a two-decade
career as a professional drag queen, Evolve thought I might have something to say about Purim.
Perhaps about the topsy-turviness of it, or the costumery or the prevalence of disguise in both the
story and our celebration of it. This is, after all, a holiday of so much concealing and revealing.
And indeed, like most drag queen rabbis I know, I am not at a particular loss for words.
The Book of Esther is indeed filled with disguise and disclosure. Most famous here is Esther, our
Jewish hero who wears a disguise that does not involve a mask but rather an omission. She does
not reveal her ethnic affiliation (the text says she is commanded this by her cousin Mordecai, but
I suspect Esther clearly sees the strategy and purpose here, and the Hebrew text just happens to
catch Mordecai mansplaining it). So Esther remains a closeted Jew as she rises to the position of
queen of Persia.
But here’s the thing about disguise: while it conceals it also reveals.
At least this is my professional opinion, having spent 21 years on stage as Winnie of the Kinsey
Sicks, America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet. Winnie was a character I played. She
was somewhat unlike me—she was proper, she was stern, she was a lesbian. That said, there was
a part of me that got expressed through Winnie that had no other place to reveal itself. There were
things I could say, freedoms I could embody, that were much harder in pants. In my thousands of
hours as Winnie, I was able to live outside of my assigned gender. No one believed me to be a
woman, and that wasn’t the point. But I did not have to live up to anyone’s standard of masculinity
either. I was free of the corset-tight gender binary, free to be myself—graceful and awkward,
confident and anxious, erudite and bumbling, fully at home in my skin, or in hers.
We typically talk about Esther’s disguise as a kind of lessening. She wasn’t her full self because
she couldn’t express herself as a Jew. But what might Esther have actually been revealing while
she was living in this supposed disguise? The story gives us a sense of it; it is not disguised. All
we have to do is look. Esther comes to embody her authority as queen. She holds and uses power.
93
She is not pretending to be the queen of Persia. She is the queen of Persia. When she determines
her plan for rescuing the Jews, she doesn’t need Mordecai or anyone else to devise or execute it.
She has learned statecraft. And when she commands the Jews to fast with her for three days, it is
not clearly a desperate petition to win God’s favor. Her task is one to which she is more than equal.
And her prayer and fasting are to make sure that she approaches her task with true humility.
This side of Esther—the part that holds and manages power confidently and humbly—is a part of
Esther that probably never would have been expressed had she not come into the palace in her non-
Jewish disguise. The Esther who would have lived out her life in the Jewish Quarter of Shushan
might never have had the opportunity to know how powerful she was.
There is one key spot in the book of Esther where the text hints at Esther’s true power, and it is
one of the two fashion-related moments.
Yes, there are only two fashion-related moments in the book of Esther. Does that surprise you?
Especially considering how much of a thing holiday masqueraders and Purim shpielers make of
Esther’s beauty and glamour. Forests of crinoline trees have been denuded; flocks of feather boas
decimated in the name of Queen Esther costumes!
But in the story, we only touch on Esther’s wardrobe twice. Once is when she becomes engaged.
Ahashverosh sets on her head a royal diadem, in Hebrew a “keter malkhut.” (Esther 2:17) The
second time is later, leading into the story’s climax, when she goes unbidden to see the king and
launch her campaign to save the Jews. In her preparation, the text tells us
“vatilbash Ester malkhut”—Esther wears malkhut. (Esther 5:1)
“Malkhut” is the common Hebrew word for “kingdom,” both in the physical, geographic sense,
and also in the more abstract meaning of “kingship” or “royalty.” In the book of Esther, the word
malkhut is mostly used to refer to Ahashverosh’s realm or his sovereignty.
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But what does it mean to say Esther wore “malkhut”? It is an odd formulation. Translations of the
book of Esther say that she wore royal garments. But the text doesn’t actually say “garments,” and
it could have. Instead, in the simple language of the text, it was malkhut itself that she was wearing.
In Talmud, Rabbi Hanina interprets malkhut here to mean “Ru’akh Hakodesh”—the Holy Divine
Spirit (BT Megillah 15a). While Esther’s tribal affiliation remains hidden, there is something of
the Divine that is revealing itself through her. When she enters the king’s chamber, it is a gross
trivialization to say she is beautiful. Instead, in Rabbi Hanina’s view, she is—literally— a
revelation.
Our mystical literature loves this moment because of the array of meanings and associations the
concept of Malkhut has in Kabbalah. To capture this, you might need a slight refresher on the
Kabbalistic Tree of Life (no offense if you don’t).
In our mystical understanding, the Source of all things is an undifferentiated infinite Oneness. An
undifferentiated Divine. “The Tree of Life” is a model that posits a ten-point process through which
Divinity differentiates, refines and re-shapes itself in order to form and be present in this world.
The first node, or sefirah, of the Divine Tree of Life is called Keter, or “crown.” This spot in the
flow of Divinity represents something very abstract – a gentle and generative ripple of Divine Will.
From there the Divine energy flows from sefirah to sefirah until it reaches the tenth: Malkhut.
Malkhut represents the Divine, now transformed and physicalized into countless beings and
objects, wave and particle. Malkhut is the world as we know it, but with the added awareness that
underneath the illusion of all this separateness and physicality there is the truth of an infinite and
permeating Divine. So Malkhut is this Earth. And Malkhut is the Divine energy that permeates and
pulses through it. And Malkhut is the close Divine presence that we can perceive in this earthly
realm that we call Shekhinah. And Malkhut is us as well—the assembly of the People of Israel,
which we can perhaps read expansively as being all of humanity.
So when Esther sweeps into the king’s chamber wearing Malkhut, she is the Earth and she is the
Shekhinah. She is Ahashverosh’s kingdom and God’s as well. She is power and sovereignty. She
is the majesty of all Creation. And she is the collective of all of us. Her robes are no fashion
95
statement—unless as a statement by no less than the Fashioner of All Creation. (One can only
imagine the dazed paparazzi on the red carpet: “Your Majesty, you look divine!”—followed by the
mandatory but in this case rhetorical question, “Who are you wearing?”)
Glaringly missing from the Book of Esther is any direct mention of God. By focusing on this use
of the word malkhut, our forebears interpret God right back into the story. Not as a purveyor of
showy miracles, such as sea partings and salt pillars; not as a human-like personality; but as
Malkhut: Divinity that is integrated into everything, if you allow yourself to see it. When Esther
enters the king’s rooms, arrayed in the light of Shekhinah, King Ahashverosh has no choice but to
see.
Brave and confident Esther was having a moment. She was channeling something big and
luminous. How might it have felt to her?
Performers, writers, artists, athletes and even rabbis are familiar to some degree with moments like
these, moments of flow. Sometimes, whatever is coming out of you on stage or on paper or on the
ball field or the bimah feels like it is coming through you rather than from you.
Sometimes, you get through a whole stage show, and everything goes right, and only afterwards
do you realize that you had forgotten to worry about your props and your wig and your lines. Or
you daven (pray) something beautiful and stirring and afterwards you can’t even remember what
you said, except that it left you and the people around you breathless.
I think those moments are ones in which we, like Queen Esther, are wearing Malkhut. We are still
ourselves; we haven’t dissolved into undifferentiated nothingness. But there is something of the
embedded Divine that is choosing to reveal itself. When we lose ourselves in beauty or in purpose,
it is Malkhut asserting itself. And in that state there is much we can do. We can save the people!
Esther does.
When Mordecai first tells Esther that the Jews are relying on her for rescue, he says, “u-mi yodea
im l’eit kazot higa’t lamalkhut”? “Who knows if it is not for just such a moment as this that you
came into the Malkhut? (Esther 4:14). By Malkhut he might have meant simply “the palace.” But
how can we not hear in these words a different question: “Who knows if it is not for just such a
96
moment as this that you came into the world? Who knows if it is not for just such a moment as this
that you came into contact with Shekhinah? Who knows if it is not for just such a moment as this
that you came to be a vehicle of the Divine?”
As we all celebrate Purim this year, donning masks that cover the wrong halves of our faces, staring
down a global polycrisis—pandemic, injustice, climate collapse, fascism—we might wonder why
we should have been born to see such times. And this year the question asked of Esther presses
itself upon us as well. No, we are not queens (well, not all of us). But we are not powerless. We
have, each of us, come into the Malkhut—into this complex, glorious, fragile, wounded and still
God-soaked world. The odds of any of us having been born are zero. Yet here we are. So maybe
we are here in a time such as this because we are here for a time such as this. As Mordecai says,
“Who knows?”
Now might be the time to consider our own masks and disguises and notice whatever personal
truth and wholeness is lying behind them, waiting to emerge. How can we tap into Malkhut—the
Divine just below the surface—to feel into our purpose? How can we wrap ourselves in a robe of
Malkhut and let whatever is intended to flow from us flow? How can we be like Esther: determined,
powerful, humble, and full of Shekhinah’s light?
Who knows? Maybe we have all come into the Malkhut for just such a moment as this. So let’s
suit up: costumes, wigs, heels, whatever you need to start feeling who you are. Put the script down;
you’ve studied it enough. Open yourself to flow and take a deep breath. It’s showtime.
Below I present a gospel writer21 who skillfully appropriates the character of
21
Mike Cosper is the founder of Harbor Media in Louisville, Kentucky and serves as the director of podcasting for Christianity
Today and is the host of Cultivated: A Podcast about Faith and Work.
97
Esther in current Christian dilemmas regarding the intersection of politics with
religion where the leaders fail to embody their values.
The Esther Option
Enter Queen Esther. And what I call the Esther Option.
MIKE COSPER writes:22
Esther’s heroism is unique in the story of the exile. While most exilic heroes are presented as
devout and zealous for the cause of the Jews, Esther begins her story as a Jewish girl (Hadassah)
living with a Persian name (a name that honors the Ancient Near Eastern goddess Ishtar) under the
care of her cousin Mordecai (a name that honors the god Marduk). These names alone should set
off alarm bells. Nehemiah dragged people into the streets and beat them for lesser offenses.
Not only do they pass for Persians, but Esther also willingly collaborates with the palace harem in
preparation for her night in bed with the king, eating their food and doing whatever else might be
22
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/esther-option/
98
described as “preparations.” In other words, Esther is no Daniel. She’s not part of the Jewish
resistance.
The secular left of progressivism is now being confronted by the secular right of populism and
nationalism.
As the story unfolds, the king—erratic and paranoid—appoints a new vizier, Haman, who is given
unprecedented authority over the realm. Haman is an Agagite, meaning he’s a descendant of Agag
the Amalekite. (The Amalekites were some of Israel’s most vicious and heartless enemies.) So
Haman is far more than a savvy political actor. He’s the embodiment—both in his role as the vizier
and also in his identity as an Agagite—of corrupt, win-at-all-costs power.
Awakening and Identity
The first part of the Esther Option is awakening. A decree is made that everyone in the kingdom
must bow before Haman, and something in Mordecai awakens. He can’t bow to Haman, he says,
because he’s a Jew. As compromised as he may be, Haman’s rise to power sends Mordecai back
to his core identity as a Jew, one of God’s chosen people. Again, he will not bow. Haman, in
retribution, convinces the king to put out an order that will mean genocide for all the Jews in Persia.
Esther, though, is comfortably living as a Persian queen, with no one suspecting she’s Jewish.
When Mordecai appeals to her to go plead on behalf of the Jews, she’s reluctant at first. Until
Mordecai says this:
Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if
you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but
you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal
position for such a time as this? (Est. 4:12–14)
Preachers and motivational speakers are fond of quoting the last sentence of Mordecai’s speech,
but the most fascinating section is the sentence before it. Mordecai expresses his faith that God
will rescue the Jews (“deliverance . . . will arise from another place”) but he warns her of a greater
loss (“you and your father’s family will perish”).
Do we want to identify with his people, no matter the cost?
Esther is an orphan, and Mordecai is essentially warning her that if she refuses to stand with the
Jews now, she forfeits her place in her father’s family. Her family line ends, and she will live and
die as a Persian, cut off from the promises of God’s people. This is Esther’s crossroads, and it’s
the moment that motivates her to act. She too awakens.
99
We have to ask similar questions.
As the world around us applies pressure, trying to move us away from religion entirely, or to
abandon certain historic and traditional principles and doctrines, we have to ask whether we want
to be part of the family of God. Do we want to identify with his people, no matter the cost? Are
we willing to endure persecution and ridicule for the sake of our inheritance?
Embracing Vulnerability
What comes next demands that we answer another question. How, in the face of extinction, in the
face of monstrous power, can God’s people move and act in the world?
Esther calls for a fast, and then fasts herself for three days. No food, no water. In one passage of
the Talmud, it’s suspected that she spent those three days praying (of all things) the first verse of
Psalm 22. Day one: “My God.” Day two: “My God.” Day three: “Why have you forsaken me?”
Whether you give this view much authoritative merit or not, you have to admit that it’s poetic,
given what happens next. Esther’s pathway from here is the way of the cross. She will enter the
throne room uninvited and risk the wrath of the king on behalf of her people.
In many of the Sunday school versions of this story, Esther’s approach is portrayed as a moment
of romance. The beautiful Queen can’t be rejected by the king because he loves her so much. I
think this version totally misses the point. Esther comes to the king after three days of fasting and
terror. She comes not in strength, but in profound weakness. A weary, haunted presence. The king
is moved not out of love, but out of pity.
Rather than fight power with power, we walk the way of the cross, stand by our convictions, and
make ourselves vulnerable.
It’s a deliberate contrast. Haman represents the temptation to power. His fury at Mordecai leads to
a radically outsized response—the destruction of the Jewish people. But rather than face that
challenge head on, Esther embraces vulnerability. To face her death. To subvert power with
weakness.
This, too, is a crucial piece of the Esther Option. Rather than fight power with power, we walk the
way of the cross, stand by our convictions, and make ourselves vulnerable. That might mean
vulnerability to persecution and ridicule, but it might also mean many other kinds of
vulnerabilities—those that come from serving the poor and downtrodden, fighting social injustice,
and generally moving toward the places in our culture where there is the greatest need.
100
Renewal and Tradition
As for Esther, we know what comes next. Haman walks into a Shakespearean downfall, Esther’s
appeals lead to the rescue of God’s people, Esther and Mordecai rise to prominence in the king’s
court, and the Jews inaugurate Purim.
This last step is one of the most significant in the whole book. Purim isn’t just a celebration of this
particular story; it’s a celebration of Jewish identity. In his book God and Politics in Esther,
philosopher Yoram Hazony writes:
Purim, then, celebrates this re-identification as God’s people. It’s a wisdom-filled return to
tradition, to habit, and to liturgy, a reinvigoration of the diaspora Jews’ spiritual life. As Cormac
McCarthy put it in The Road, “When you’ve nothing else, construct ceremonies out of the air and
breathe upon them.” When you’ve lost your way, find anchoring practices that will reconnect you
with a sense of who you are and what your place in the world is.
When you’ve lost your way, find anchoring practices that will reconnect you with a sense of who
you are and what your place in the world is.
This is the third piece of the Esther Option. Along with awakening to faith and embracing
vulnerability, Christians need to renew their formative traditions. (Here, I think Dreher and I are
in wholehearted agreement.) We need renewal of our liturgies, our catechism, our educational
institutions, and all our pathways of spiritual formation so that authentic character can flourish
inside our churches. Some of this will require a return to the traditions of the past, but it will also
demand something new, something to answer the specific spiritual challenges of our consumeristic,
technology-saturated, sexually “liberated” age.
We need pastoral innovators like Isaac Watts, who saw the poverty and ineffectiveness of the
psalm-singing of his time and began to write his own theological translations of the Psalms, which
ultimately gave birth to the English hymn. We need the best and brightest of our time to explore
how they might develop similar pastoral, contextual innovations, which might require that some
101
of their creative energy moves away from the typical investment of those energies—platform and
celebrity—and back to institution-forming and institutional reform. This work is less glamorous,
of course, but it might better prepare the church to thrive in whatever comes next in our culture.
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Daf Ditty Megillah 15: Esther’s plight

The verse states:

Esther sent a message to Mordecai:

Tosfos explains why he did not divorce her

‫ ַוַוֹ ֹ ֲעֹמד‬,‫ ַו ִוְֹל ַַבּשׁ ֶאְסֵֵוֹר ְַמְלכוּת‬,‫א ַו ְִיִהיַ◌ַבּיּבֿם ַהְשּׁ◌ִל ִיִשׁי‬

Rabbi Avrohom Adler writes:2

The Gemora continues explaining verses from the Megillah.

The queen trembled a lot.

Esther called Hasach to inquire into Mordechai's behavior.

And they told Mordechai Esther's words.

And Mordechai passed.

And on the third day, Esther dressed in royalty.

The Gemora returns to the verses in the Megillah.

And she stood in the inner courtyard of the king

And when the king saw Esther...

The king and Haman should come today to the feast.

On that night, the king couldn't sleep

And they were read.

And it was found written.

SAYING OVER IN THE NAME OF THE ONE WHO SAID IT

ESTHER CLOTHED HERSELF IN THE DIVINE SPIRIT

Rav Mordechai Kornfeld writes:3

ACHASHVEROSH: DOG OR LION?

QUEEN ESTHER'S INTENTION IN MAKING A BANQUET FOR

AROUSING THE KING'S JEALOUSY

Steinzaltz (OBM) writes:

The teachings of Rabbi Chanina

More teachings from Rabbi Chanina follow.

Rabbi Jeremy Rosen writes:6

And one more:

Esther – Alone in the Palace

Rabbi Yisroel Roll writes:9

Our daf states:

Was that worth her personal aloneness in the palace?

Rav David Brofsky writes:10

his final moments, recites this lament on the cross?

Dr. Abraham J. Berkovitz writes:11

The Lament of Psalm 22 (see also daf Ditty Megillah 4)

The psalmist next asks God for support:

This torment alludes to the Psalmist’s lament,

Matthew adds that the crowd continues to mock Jesus by saying:

Jesus as the Proper Interpretation

Jewish Polemical Response

Esther as “the Deer of the Dawn”: The End of Miracles

Among the many voices on display is that of R. Assi:

Responding to the Miracles Following Jesus’ Death

(Matt 27:51 cf. Mark 15:38 and Luke 23:45).

bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.[23]

Quarterly 70 (2008): 709–728 .

3. English translation of biblical verses is from NRSV with slight adjustments.

(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985; repr. of 1933).

Israel Koschitsky Virtual Beit Midrash, trans. David Strauss.

the clear identity label: “Christian.”

μεθερμηνευόμενον· ὁ θεός μου ὁ θεός μου, εἰς τί ἐγκατέλιπές με;

8. The Gospel of Luke has different last words for Jesus:

breathed his last.

in a sponge and pass it up to his mouth on a stick:

Κατά Ιωάννην 19:30

Κατά Μάρκον 15:17 15:18