Holy Days Archive

Welcome to CLAL Holy Days, the place where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on upcoming Jewish holidays.

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PURIM

Of the five biblical books known as megillot (scrolls), three have unexpected heroines. In The Song of Songs, it is a shepherdess who describes in unabashedly sensual terms her beloved shepherd, a man to whom she is not yet married. The heroine of Ruth is a Moabite woman (Moab was an historic enemy of Israel) who converts to Judaism.

More unusual than either Ruth or the unnamed shepherdess of The Song of Songs is Queen Esther. Esther's greatness is so taken for granted among Jews that we seldom reflect on how peculiar a role model she is. Who is Esther, after all? She is a young Jewish woman who wins a beauty contest and marries a non-Jewish king. Those are two of the most significant biographical details the Bible supplies. It certainly doesn't tell us that she set aside time to study Torah, or that she scrupulously observed the Sabbath. Nonetheless, when the Jewish people, one and all, were in danger of being murdered by Haman, it was Esther who turned the king against his anti-Semitic adviser, Haman, and saved the Jews.

One of the most significant, though rarely mentioned lessons of this biblical book is that the Jewish community -- today no less than in the past -- should be very cautious before it despairs of any Jew. An intermarried beauty queen seems an unlikely candidate to risk her life on behalf of her people. But Esther did exactly that and her commitment saved hundreds of thousands of Jews from death.

(Joseph Telushkin)