“All the books of the Prophets and all the Writings will in the future be nullified except for the Scroll of Esther; it will continue to exist as the Five Books of the Torah and as the Oral Laws that are never nullified”
(Maimonides, Hil. Megillah 2:18)
Maimonides, based on a dictum of the Jerusalem Talmud, ascribes to the Book of Esther a relevance that will outlive the messages of the other Writings. Commentators break their heads trying to understand why the deliverance from wicked Haman in ancient Persia should be granted this special status. God knows that since then there have been many more Hamans. In the words of the Passover Haggadah: “Not one alone stood over us to annihilate us, rather in every generation there are those who stand over us to annihilate us, and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand.”
While Israel’s miraculous salvation, agented by Esther and Mordechai, is certainly the central theme of the story, let us not forget the subtext. The beginning of the Scroll reads like a feminist satire. King Ahashverosh comes off as an imbecilic ruler. After his Queen Vashti refuses to appear in public before his invited guests, Ahashverosh deposes her. (Eventually she will be replaced by Queen Esther, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.) Ahashverosh’s counselors fear that all the ladies of the realm will rise up, emboldened by the example of the rebellious Vashti. They convince the besotted monarch to publicize a royal edict imposing upon wives to speak their husbands’ tongue. “That every man should wield authority in his home and speak the language of his people” (Esther 1:22).
The Midrash points out that this draconian decree is the opposite of the altruistic behavior displayed by the Almighty on Mount Sinai. At the time of the revelation on Sinai, God and Israel were likened to a groom and his bride. Just having departed from Egypt, the language of the people was Egyptian, so the Almighty opened the Ten Commandments in the familiar idiom. The first word, “Anokhi” (“I”) resonates in Egyptian as “Ankh.” Rather than forcing his wife to speak his language, the “husband“ spoke to his “wife” in her native tongue.
Why the Scroll of Esther is granted eternal relevance when other prophecies and narratives fall to the wayside, is an open discussion. Perhaps recent events in Iran, spearheaded by the rallying cry of “Women, life, freedom” (“Jin, jiyan, azadi” in Kurdish; “Zan, zendegi, azadi” in Farsi) may be viewed as partial fulfillment of the afterlife of the Scroll of Esther. The parodical treatment accorded Ahashverosh with his excessive, heavy handed demands, strikes one as apropos when confronting the Ayatollah and his murderous morality police.
(Incidentally, or not so incidentally, repression of the minority’s Kurdish language, is an integral part of the regime’s policy of coercion.)
Fantastic ! Brilliant , deep , prophetic wisdom