In the Hasidic tale “The Humble King,” Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav wrote, “If you want to understand the nature of a community, understand its humor.”
The Scroll of Esther—which is, among other things, a brilliant satire of Jewish life in the Persian Empire from about 2,300 years ago—offers a similar challenge: If you want to understand the Jews of Shushan, understand the Megillah’s humor. But who, exactly, is the object of the book’s satire?
In the second chapter of the book, we meet Mordecai, who is introduced to readers with a brief genealogy. We are told that Mordecai’s great-grandfather had been “carried into exile along with King Jeconiah of Judah, who had been driven into exile by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon” (Esther 2:5-6). This verse may seem innocuous at first glance, but the satirical aim of the entire book emerges right here.
A little biblical history is called for in order to understand this. Jeconiah was the 18 year-old king of Judah who reigned for a mere three months in 597 BCE before he and his courtiers were conquered and deported eastward to Babylonia. They were the first of the Jewish exiles in Babylonia, and soon many more would follow them, in the wake of the destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE. The exile would remain a deep and traumatic memory for the Bible.
But just a few decades later—in 539 BCE—King Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylonia. Cyrus’s policy towards vanquished peoples was surprisingly liberal; he permitted the Jews to return home and rebuild their destroyed Temple. This, too, is an enormous event in the Bible’s mindset. Psalm 126, for instance, gushes: When G-d brought back the returnees to Zion, we were like dreamers!
This is the historical background of Esther and Mordecai. Their saga takes place in Susa (Shushan), the capital of Persia, a century and a half after Cyrus’s edict that permitted the exiles to return home.
All of which points us towards an uncomfortable question. Mordecai and Esther belong to a generation when Judea was reborn, and the Second Temple was standing. So what were Jews living doing living in the Persian diaspora—after they miraculously had been permitted to return to their homeland?
The answer is: In fact, only a small minority of Jews returned home. Susa/Shushan was the cosmopolitan capital of the world’s most vast empire; Yehud/Judea was, by contrast, a small backwater, and the rebuilding effort was not easy. The returnees were not immediately successful in rebuilding the Temple; their economy was weak, their will was depleted, and (wait for it…) there was ugly infighting about which Jews were the most “authentic”! (That’s right—the painful history of “Who is the real Jew?” begins here. We can read about the Jewish infighting in the biblical book of Ezra.)
This was the situation of the Jews of the Megillah. They were the ones who, when offered the opportunity to go, said… “Thanks, but we’re good.” Instead, they embraced the relative prosperity and comfort of the world’s most cosmopolitan society of the day. They were the ones who opted to stay right where they were.
All this should give us some perspective. Esther is a satire about Jewish lives and mores in a diaspora. Now, that satire can be viewed from two perspectives.
On one hand, it can be read as a celebration of the diaspora’s triumphs. After all, the Jews of Shushan have risen to the very halls of power. And when they are threatened by an antisemitic monster, they take action. From this point of view, the Megillah is a story of empowerment and heroism. As Bible scholar Adele Berlin has written, Queen Esther’s courage “strengthens the ethnic pride of Jews under foreign domination.”[1] For many of us, that’s the way Esther was learned.
But on the other had, from a satirical point of view, the author pokes great fun at these Diaspora Jews. Sure, they’re successful and proud; but still, the reader might wonder, what kinds of Jews are these? After all, they’re not very pious; G-d’s name is never invoked in the entire book, even with impending disaster. They don’t seem to keep kosher. (What, pray tell, did Esther eat in the king’s harem—tuna salad?). They take on fashionable local names. (Esther has a perfectly beautiful Hebrew name—“Hadassah”—but travels in Persian circles by her more familiar moniker, evoking the Babylonian deity Ishtar.) Yet they certainly can shrey gevalt: when calamity arrives, they fast for three days! (Nowhere in Jewish literature are we ever instructed to fast for three days, no matter how severe the crisis.)
None of this should be offensive or insulting; there is a difference between laughing at and laughing with. Part of the book’s brilliance is to make us grin at these recognizable stereotypes, and to see a bit of ourselves in its caricatures. The humor of Esther is broad, but it isn’t cruel. Instead, like Purim itself, it takes aim at established pieties and deflates them. We can imagine an ancient reader smiling, thinking, “Of course—these are the Jews who had the opportunity to go home, but didn’t!” We know these people.
And perhaps we can recognize a bit of ourselves in this story as well.
This is all a very good and spiritually healthy thing. Purim reminds us that there is a big difference between righteousness and self-righteousness.
When we consider our own self-image, as well as the relationships between the Jews of today’s Diasporas and the State of Israel, more righteousness and less self-righteousness is extremely valuable. To rediscover how to speak, to learn, and most especially to laugh with one another would be the greatest Purim gift we could give one another.
[1] Adele Berlin, The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2001), p.xxxv.