Haman

Tradition! It IS just a bit of fun, isn’t it?

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The Holiday of Purim is here again, and costumes, parties and fun are sprouting everywhere. Fun is the name of the game. Is there anything wrong with that? I admit that I love to see people smile and all the children and adults dressed up and clowning around! I am not keen on kids eating a lot of candy, partly because I know the health problems that go along with too much sugar, but then that is a personal issue. 

I want to examine, and I don’t claim to be right or wrong, a few things I am uncomfortable with:

  • I know that God’s Eternal Name, YHVH, is important in all of Tenakh, but why is he not mentioned in any form in the entire book? People tell me that it is because He had to stay hidden. That does not make sense. When is it right to hide the God whom we worship from stories that we write about our lives? If anything in a story was done by the Eternal, then why is the emphasis placed on the clever Mordecai and his beautiful niece, Esther, who found herself lined up to become queen of Persia? Why not mention that the Hand of God was involved? Why take credit for the Jews being so clever and smart and leave God completely out of it? Was this because they knew they were in the wrong place at the wrong time? Were they indeed under persecution at this time?
  • If they were not suffering persecution, then what else may have been the reason for hiding one’s ethnicity?
  • Is it possible that the story about justifying life for the Chosen People among the nations? No need for a a temple? No need for a Covenant with the Land and the God of the Land?
  • Why were the majority of the Jews still in Persia many years after they were commissioned to return to the Land sixty years after the decree of Cyrus the Great? 
  • Why did Hadassah become Esther naming herself after the pagan goddess Ishtar? And why did Mordecai take that name since it is also a variation of Marduk, a pagan deity worshiped in Babylon and ancient Mesopotamia? According to Torah it is wrong to pronounce the name of a pagan god, but these went so far as to rename themselves after these idols..
  • Perhaps choosing these names was a political move to be able to work and live among the Persians. But the question looms large, why do they want to stay in the Galut? Is it because they are now permeated with the culture? Do they love the customs of the Gentiles more than their own?
  • And what else might be the motive to hide at this time before Haman had the decree to kill all the Jews signed by the king? Would Haman have declared the Jews as public enemy number one, if he had known that the queen was Jewish? The story does not say that they were being persecuted. If so, then why not move back to the land? 
  • The entire plot of the story of Esther seems to justify working subversively to overthrow the powers that be. When is it right to clearly hide one’s identity to be able to climb the political ladder with the intent of having someone at the top? Were Jews ever commanded to do such things? There is plenty of evidence of this happening throughout history. We see Joseph shaving to appear acceptable to Pharaoh when he was brought before him, but he apparently didn’t hide his parentage, because later in the Joseph story, the Egyptians would not eat with the Hebrews. He apparently was known as a Hebrew even since Potiphar put him in jail. 
  • Maybe there are other reasons, but to me, it seems that the Jews who stayed in Persia enjoyed the Persian lifestyle and culture and did what they did to justify living in the Galut 60 or 70 years after Cyrus opened the way for them to leave. (Note that the decree of Cyrus took place in 539 and the events in the book of Esther were between 483 and 473. (See here and here). These dates are estimates. 

I don’t have answers, on this, and I have to admit that I have gone along with things many times so that I don’t make waves. What should we do about this? Is there anybody else out there who is concerned?

So “Happy Purim” and please think deeply when you drink so much you can’t discern Haman from Mordecai!

Ariella

Purim–Queen of Chutzpah–What about Hamas?

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Purim 2024! The Middle East war is bombarding us on every side, is there anything significant for us in Purim and the book of Esther? Right or wrong, this time we are handling the sneaky Haman (Hamas) differently. Maybe because we do not have a covert Jewish woman sitting as queen in Iran’s palace. Esther prayed and fasted and knew how to don her most beautiful garments to be attractive enough to break the King’s rules about illegal entrance into the throne room. She had no invitation but she took a chance and went before the king. What Chutzpah! Really? She sounds a lot like a normal Israeli once you know the culture. Nobody takes no for an answer here, nor do we always follow protocol. How did we learn this? And did Esther (Hadassah) teach us something about rules that make no sense and the right to refuse something that does us harm? 

Some Biblical scholars say that the book of Esther is a myth. Even if it is, there are lessons we can learn from its teaching about Jews in exile. Must Jews always take things into their own hands to be able to defend themselves? Is the Most High Eternal God of the Universe somehow gone on leave of absence? Or is He trying to get us to use our God-given wisdom and cunning to run the enemy out of our Promised Land? Is He somewhere in the shadows standing alongside us as we fight? Does He bring circumstances about so that even corrupt leaders are forced to make right choices about how and where to fight and whom to resist, even if it be the United States and Great Britain? Can we trust that things will go well in the long run? I often wonder what will happen when the United States decides to cut off all military aid to Israel–aid that they promised to their greatest ally in the Middle East. It is a horrifying thought and one that our leaders are trying to avoid by what appears to be stupid agreements with mediators who have betrayed Israel. And many of these mediators are actually Jewish!

So, Israel has offered 700 terrorists, some of them murderers, in exchange for 40 hostages! That is more than 17 to 1!  Are we serious? But as we watch, I wonder if something will happen that will change the circumstances.. Are we really alone in this? Is the Great YHWH absent from this war? Or is He working behind the scenes?

Yesterday my husband and I attended a Purim Megillah reading. The normal Purim treats and drinks were on the table. Visitors from out of town were present as well as friends from our town in the Golan Heights. The Megillah reading was a normal 2000+ years traditional reading except for the fact that we sat outside and as the chazan was reading the scroll, IAF planes flew over every minute or so, continuing throughout the day in response to hundreds of attacks from the enemy. Many of us had figured in advance that with Ramadan in place, Purim 2024 was going to be under fire from Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria.

The loud sound of the F-15s overhead was enough to make some want another drink of the hard stuff. The Chazan tried to space the reading so that the planes would drown out the name “Haman”. I guess it was meaningful. For me, the service was a reminder that we were in another encounter with Haman, but this time we are in our Holy Land and the looming question is…”Why do we suffer Amalek after we return to our homeland?” Are we still exiles? Did we import some of that mentality from the diaspora? The celebration, if you will call it that, became meaningful to me when I began to contemplate what is happening on a spiritual level. 

I recently questioned the need to continue Purim festivities. Must we remember that we are still in Persia–Iran?  Amalek is, in fact, still in our midst! And 75,000 enemies killed at the command of Esther and Mordechai was still not enough to put an end to the hatred that has generated through the centuries.

Seventy-five thousand is a lot more than the MSM claims as Israel’s victims! Some reports say 32,000 Gazans killed.Maybe it would be better for Israel if this was true! Where is our thinking? Why are we pussyfooting around to save “innocent civilians” when we know what those same “civilians” did to our people on October 7? The old saying “never forget” seems to be forgotten. Why are we trying to make peace with those who have our necks on their chopping block? Where is the Chutzpah of the Queen of Persia? She did not, after all, try to be politically correct when she had Haman and his ten sons hung on the gallows!

When will we realize that something is walking out of step with the Eternal? How can we expect His full intervention? Maybe we should stop fasting to fulfill tradition and start fasting for a renewed vision as to what Hashem expects of us!

And then, we shall ARISE and take back that which was promised to us in the strength of YHWH, the Almighty God of the Universe!

 “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of YHWH rises upon you.  See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but YHWH rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” Isa 60:1-3 

Shalom in the Midst of War,

Ariella

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