Commentary on the Book of Esther.
“Oh, there’s no such thing as boy things and girl things. It’s just whatever you like.”
Such was my 7-year-old son’s gently delivered and matter-of-fact response when another child firmly told him that flowers and hearts are “girl things.” Faced with the notion that gender is a binary (there are only two “options,” and the differences between the two are strict, stark, and all-encompassing), he countered with this truth: When it comes to gender expression in humans, there’s variation. And that’s okay.
What a perfect lesson for Purim.
As our communities prepare to hear the megillah (the scroll of Esther), and as Jewish leaders among us prepare to present the story in a relevant (and funny and entertaining way), how can we mine the story of Queen Esther, whose “outing” of herself as Jewish saves our entire people, for its gender-diversity-affirming potential? How can we do so while being sensitive to the otherwise triggering aspects of the story?
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The story of Purim opens on a gender-divided kingdom, with two competing, raucous parties: one for men, hosted by King Ahasuerus, and one for women, hosted by Queen Vashti. But, almost immediately, boundaries are crossed. The king summons Vashti to dance before the drunken men while wearing her crown (and, according to tradition, only her crown). She refuses. And then the real trouble starts.
The king’s advisers warn that no woman can act so unconventionally. There are rules here, they assert! What will happen when other women in the realm hear about Vashti’s refusal (a feminist move, perhaps) to be displayed like an object, sexualized in front of not only her husband but also all of his cronies and subordinates!?
And so the “beauty pageant,” the call for a new queen, and Esther’s transformation from Hadassah, a Jewish woman, into Esther, Shushan’s queen in the Persian harem.
Too often — and especially when presenting the story to children — we valorize Esther while simultaneously presenting her as a vapid pageant contestant. We make fun of Ahasuerus’s powerlessness (what kind of man is he!?). Told “straight-on,” with no irony, with no attention to what might be below the surface, the Purim story disturbingly reinforces harmful traditional gender norms. After all, whose masculinity could be more fragile than Haman’s? Whose heterosexual appeal is so easily reduced to “beta-male” buffoonery than Ahasuerus’s? Whose refusal to play the game of the male gaze is more easily equated with being a “B&*^h”?!
This year, my older child is 7, the “age of reason.” He’s capable of understanding things on a different level than he was before. And when he encounters the Purim story, I want him to hear it as an exaggerated, topsy-turvy tale of crossing boundaries for the sake of saving an entire people. Not a cautionary tale about rebellious women. Not an affirmation that folks assigned female at birth should “use their feminine wiles” to get what they want (actually, in this case, not what Esther wants, but what ethics demands).
As an “out” Reform rabbi on a college campus who works closely with our LGBTQ Jewish community, I am often teaching and learning about inclusion and diversity with regard to gender identity and expression. It matters to the folks in our communities how we acknowledge the really disturbing parts of the Purim story. Why does our tradition continue to demonize (sometimes quite literally) Vashti for standing her ground against sexual harassment and abuse? Why do we present what is effectively the trafficking in women’s bodies as an “innocent” beauty pageant? Can we rather turn the way we tell the tale upside down?
When Esther “touches the tip of the king’s scepter,” it’s intended to be hilarious. Hilarious precisely because it is suggestive. Sexualized. Transgressive. A woman is touching the source of the king’s power! And getting what she wants! And it’s hilarious because the source of his power looks, let’s face it, an awful lot like a certain part of the male reproductive anatomy.
But Megillat Esther refuses to place the power in that scepter. Power lies, instead, in the ability to surprise folks. To refuse to allow the outside to “match” the inside in any predictable way. Vashti remains covered up, a subject banished but outside the bounds of Ahasuerus’s power. The eunuchs, assigned male at birth, move freely between spaces demarcated “male” or “female.” Haman, who wanted to be head of all, is hung by his very own head. And, ultimately, a woman achieves freedom for her people not by nagging, as the king’s advisers feared, but by taking up the pen and writing her own story.
Rabbi Nikki DeBlosi is assistant director for Jewish education and engagement at the NYU Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life. She combines an academic background in queer theory and women’s studies, experience in feminist political organizing, and a deep love of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in her work in the Hillel world. She was named one of America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis by the Forward in 2015. Follow her at @RavNikki.