What Esther Could See
“You’ve totally got this,” I assured my student. “And you aren’t in it alone. I’m right here having your back. If you need help, say the word and I’ll help you.”
“Okay,” my student said with a deep breath and a loud sigh. “It’s a lot of words.”
“Yep. Made up of letters you know. They’ll help you, too.”
“Vay’hi bimei Achashverosh,” my 4th grader sounded out letter-vowel, letter-vowel, slow and steady. “Oh! That guy. The king!”
“Exactly!” I nodded through the camera just above my screen. “Keep going!”
“Hu Achashverosh . . . that’s him again!”
“Uh huh.”
“Hu Achashverosh hamelech. That’s what I said! Achashverosh the king! Hey, I’m reading this! And I know what it says!”
“In the original,” I affirmed. “How does it feel?”
“Really, really good. Great. What happened next?”
We did not read every word of every verse of all ten chapters. Even the 4th graders who are all-in aren’t all-in for that! And at least one student wasn’t into this at all and my 1:1 time with him floundered mightily. However, most of them were beyond excited that they were reading the real story of Esther. In the Hebrew. Just like their ancestors. A few of them were meeting Achashverosh in the text just months after being introduced to their first Hebrew letters. By speeding ahead through the chapters, pausing for carefully selected Hebrew here and there and me telling story bits to fill in the parts in between, we made our way to the Megillah’s theatrical, anagnorisis moment - that point in a play or novel in which our principal character recognizes the true nature of their circumstances.
“Go, assemble all the Jews who live in Shushan, and fast on 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 4:15
And there . . . I paused.
“What,” I asked each of my students, “what is happening in this verse? What is our queen up to? What is she doing?”
It’s not the first time in the story we can find evidence of Queen Esther not being in this thing as alone as it might seem, but it’s an important turning point. It’s the point when she directly asks Mordechai for back-up. Yes, she’ll go to the king, and yes, she’ll be the only one going into the throne room. Yes, it’ll be her strategy that will have to undermine Haman. But she’s not really doing it alone and she knows it.
We make such a thing of Mordechai’s line just before Esther’s. And sure, she is queen, and it’s plausible that she is the only person in this moment of the narrative who can save her people. Let’s think for a moment about where “maybe it was for this purpose that you were made queen” gets us, though. Behind the scenes, unnamed, a micromanaging god has orchestrated her forcible taking from her home, the only home she’s known since the deaths of both of her parents, and has allowed or arranged for her to be trafficked to the palace of a king of - if we are generous - questionable authority who had his previous wife either exiled or killed. When the monarch whose affection has turned to exile or execution in the past says they love, do we believe them? This micromanaging god would have stood by as she was raped by that king, and if she succeeds she will live the rest of her life as that man’s wife. When the ruler offering “half their kingdom” has proven themself fickle with their loyalties, do we trust them?
I don’t.
And the way I read her, Esther didn’t, either.
She is not cowed into agreement by Mordechai’s words, but I do think she hears something in them.
“On the contrary,” he says, “if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis.” (Esther 4:14)
“Another quarter” points out explicitly that she isn’t alone here. There are other quarters, other players in this story. “Your father’s house” helps her hold onto the legacy of her ancestors. A descendent of the loved and respected Sarah and Rebecca, Esther isn’t the first to have been abducted and forced into a non-consensual sexual relationship with a ruler. She is a Benjamite, making her a daughter of Rachel and a niece of Leah and Joseph and Judah . . . and Dina. She is a granddaughter of Jacob who was also Israel and who wrestled with God. She is from people who don’t always know what the right thing to do is, but who try - we always try. She is from people who stand by each other, Judah for Benjamin, and now she - a Benjamite, for the Judah-ites. “וּמִי יוֹדֵעַ” “who knows” reminds her that while God isn’t named in this story, God is everywhere in this story.
She’ll do this hard thing, but she’ll do it her way, not Mordechai’s.
She’ll do this hard thing strengthened by God and with the back-up of all of the Jews of Shushan because she will ask for it.
She is Hadassah AND she is Esther. Queen Esther.
How do we know? We know because of her next words and the way Mordechai responds to them.
“Go, assemble all the Jews who live in Shushan, and fast on 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 4:15
Queen Esther commands Mordechai to assemble all of the Jews who live in Shushan to have her back, to pray and fast for three days.
Over these three days, Queen Esther and the maidens who have been by her side for years will also fast. They will pray. To whom will they pray? Is it even a question? They will pray to the unnamed God who doesn’t micromanage a series of events that include sex trafficking, but who has, nevertheless, been with Esther’s people for millenia. And these night and day days aren’t just any days, they are the first nights of Passover. (Esther 3:12) I imagine Esther thinking about Jocheved, the mother of Moses who couldn’t be certain of her child being saved, but who did what she could and made the basket and set him in the water. I love the idea of her remembering Miriam who stood and watched her brother float on the Nile. And I smile when I think of her calling Batya to mind, the daughter of Pharaoh undermining his rule right under his nose.
And Mordechai? How does he respond to a woman telling him what to do?
“So Mordecai went about [the city] and did just as Esther had commanded him.” (Esther 4:17)
When we look at our story, we can see it. We can see that even when we feel most alone, we are actually in it together.
Esther could see it.
And my students could see it.
“It’s like Queen Esther has to do this big hard thing because of the big bad things that are happening, but everyone knows about the big hard thing she has to do, and they are all kind of with her even though they can’t really BE with her in that exact minute, you know?”
“I do know,” I smiled, and, admittedly, choked up a bit.
“She probably wasn’t the only one, anyway,” said a different student. “I bet lots of the Jewish people had to do hard things then because of the really bad things that were happening. We just see Queen Esther, but maybe there are more stories about the hard things other people were doing, too.”
“I wonder if she ever talked to Miriam about this,” a student pondered.
“When might that have happened?” I asked.
“I dunno. It’d be cool though,” they said.
“It would. Sounds like we need to write some fan fiction,” I said. “Maybe Miriam could come visit Esther in her sukkah.”
Here’s the main thing, though. This story isn’t only about Esther, it’s about us. It’s about us when we are the Jews of Shushan, the support system. It’s about us when we are Mordechai, the mentor and teacher. And it’s about us when we are Esther, the person at the center of our own story who is facing something big and hard.
May we always know where to find the support we need, and may we always have the strength to ask for it.
Chag Purim Sameach!
*I always cite my sources when I have them. This notion about Esther is mine. If you know of a source that has similar ideas, please let me know.
Want to read the whole Megillah? Here you go!