Thoughts on Purim
I know I’ve been absent… Twitter and Facebook have been taking over my time. There is one thought I wanted to share about Purim and the story of Megillat Esther.
I always considered myself to be rather a peacenik and although my views about Israel are rather rightist, I still had a problem with certain verses (chapter 8 verse 11) and chapter 9 verse 13. In summary, Esther is asked by the king what do you want to do, and she answers, kill and maim people for one day, then the king asks her the next day what she wants, and she answers another day to kill etc…
Until this year, I thought that sounded very bloodthirsty…why couldn’t she ask for self rule in the land of Israel (if he had control of India through Ethiopia…that is definitely in the middle). So what changed my mind? Cataloging. Well, not simply cataloging, but a specific collection of personal videos by professor Dov Levin. As a Jewish partisan, and survivor of the Kovna Ghetto, he has collected videos with personal narratives, and meetings of groups of survivors. The most touching for me was the gathering of child survivors from Kovna, where the “older survivors (who were 12-17 at the time) told the younger survivors (infant-8 or so) what went on and helped them to understand things that at the time were beyond their comprehension.
So what does this have to do with the story of Esther? Most of us think of the Holocaust as Hitler and the Nazis, or Germany killing all the Jews. Unfortunately, that is very incorrect. The survivors of Kovna, and other places recount how before the Nazis even crossed the border into Lithuania, and Poland, the natives of those places started their killing spree. The hatred was there…just waiting for an opportune moment. In the Purim story, the decree to kill the Jews had been sent out and then retracted, but the underlying hatred and bloodlust was still there. If the Jews hadn’t defended themselves, they probably wouldn’t have survived that day… sort of a gee, we never got the retraction notice…maybe it got lost in the mail…
So, there you go…my thoughts for the year on Megillat Esther….
I found your blog through the tachlis listserv. This post was very insightful; I appreciate that you shared it and also cited the Holocaust video.
Comment by Yehudis — March 12, 2009 @ 6:58 am
Came upon this following a comment made on What War Zone?!
Very thoughtful post! For an elaboration on the ideas you present, I recommend Yoram Hazony’s excellent book The Dawn which goes chapter by chapter through the megilla.
Comment by Amy — March 18, 2009 @ 8:38 pm
hmmm….I never knew that about Esther…never read the Megillah either.
Comment by Orli — March 26, 2009 @ 2:00 pm