Vampire Weekend's Surprising Jewish Stories
7 min read
The ancient Jewish queen used her female strengths to save the Jewish people.
This year, International Women’s Day coincides with the Jewish holiday of Shushan Purim, when Jews recall how Queen Esther enabled our Jewish ancestors to escape from genocide in ancient Persia. A fitting occurrence since Queen Esther is the ultimate feminist hero.
We don’t know a lot about Esther’s early life. She was born soon after a terrible calamity in Jewish life: the invasion of ancient Israel by the great Babylonian empire. Tens of thousands of Jews were forcibly displaced from Israel into present-day Iraq and Iran. She lived at a time of shifting empires: mighty Babylonia was swallowed by the emerging Persian empire, ruled over by a violent and mercurial king (Ahasuerus, also known as by his Greek name, Xerxes).
Esther grew up with two names: her Persian name, Esther, and her Jewish name, Hadassah. (The Talmud says her name Hadassah, which means myrtle in Hebrew, suited her since she was a sweet as the beautifully-smelling myrtle plant.) Orphaned at a young age, Esther lived with her uncle Mordechai, a prominent leader of the exiled Jewish community. It was a time of uncertainty and displacement. Yet, Esther thrived.
Esther’s life soon took an even darker turn. The circumstances that led to her being crowned Queen of Persia are horrific. After murdering his wife (because she wouldn’t cavort with his drunken friends at a party), Ahasuerus ordered families throughout his kingdom to surrender their daughters to his harem, and declared he’d chose his next queen from amongst them.
Unsplash.com, Miguel Bruna
Esther was one of the thousands of girls swept up in this hell. Imprisoned in the harem, she never lost her resilience. Esther kept her identity as a Jew a secret. The Talmud describes how she counted the days of each week so that she could celebrate Shabbat in secret, and rather than eat non-kosher meat, she subsisted on a diet of legumes and beans. Esther’s heroic acts partly stemmed from her willingness to collaborate, her acute spirituality, and her high Emotional Intelligence.
Studies find that one of the biggest differences between women and men is their willingness and ability to collaborate with others. The male leadership ideal has historically been the solitary hero; numerous studies show that women leaders are much more likely to foster team efforts to achieve their goals. “Female (leaders)...spent a greater proportion of their time working with others” than men did, one University of Missouri study has noted.
Esther springs into action and immediately adopts a collaborative style.
When the Jews of Persia were threatened by Haman, an evil government minister who plotted against them, Esther was perfectly placed to intervene. One of the most stirring moments in the Book of Esther is Mordechai’s plea to Esther to risk her life to help thwart the plot. Mordechai points out to a terrified Esther that perhaps her entire life story, her long and difficult road to the throne, occurred just for this moment. “Who knows whether it was just for such a time as this that you attained the royal position” (Esther 4:14). Esther springs into action and immediately adopts a collaborative style.
She asks that the entire Jewish population of the capital mobilize to help her in her mission. “Go assemble all the Jews that are to be found in Shushan (the capital city),” she instructs Mordechai. Esther asks that everyone fast and pray to help her in her mission. Esther’s team-building instincts increased her chances of success.
Physics pioneer Marie Curie famously cautioned, “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” During her life, Dr. Curie’s enemies spread the false rumor that she was Jewish in order to capitalize on widespread antisemitism and deny her a seat in the French Academy.
This is ironic, because her outlook on life perfectly captures a deep Jewish truth: women are uniquely attuned to the spiritual side of life, and this steadfast belief that we each have a higher purpose is the key to our success.
“Women generally are more religious than men,” the Pew Research Center has found. Women are more likely to keep the bigger picture in mind and to feel that they have a higher purpose in life than merely the minutiae of everyday drudgery.
That was certainly true of Esther. How else could she have endured the many years she led a solitary double life, first as a prisoner in the royal harem, then as queen, hiding her Jewish identity and enduring the constant unwanted attentions of the terrifying Ahasuerus? Esther was able to keep her sanity only because she remembered, day after bleak day, that her life wasn’t meaningless, that she had a higher purpose to achieve in her life, even though for years it wasn’t clear exactly what that was.
The term Emotional Intelligence (EI) was coined in 1990 by two psychology professors, Dr. Peter Salovey of Yale and Dr. John D. Mayer of the University of New Hampshire. “Emotional intelligence is the ability to accurately perceive your own and other’s emotions; to understand the signals that emotions send about your relationships; and to manage your own and others’ emotions”. Studies show that women tend to have higher levels of EI, and Queen Esther seems to have had sky-high levels of it, enabling her to thwart Haman’s genocidal plan.
Esther also had nerves of steel to go along with her EI. The Scroll of Esther describes how she went about convincing Ahasuerus to reverse Haman’s plans to exterminate Persia’s Jews. Esther’s first obstacle was approaching the king to begin with: anyone appearing in his throne room without permission was liable for the death penalty, and Ahasuerus hadn’t called for Esther in many weeks. Esther took her life into her hands and approached her tyrannical husband. When he showed her mercy and asked her what she wanted (instead of killing her), Esther replied only that she wished to hold a beautiful banquet for him and his advisor Haman.
At that banquet, when the king was favorably disposed towards Esther and offered her anything she wished, she shrewdly asked only that she be allowed to host yet another banquet for Ahasuerus and Haman. The king eagerly accepted, curious as to what his queen was up to.
It was a masterful move: Esther knew just how to position herself to achieve maximum mercy from the king. At the second banquet, she sensed the moment was right: when Ahasuerus asked her again what gifts he could possibly give her, Esther finally revealed her true goal of asking him to save the Jews. “If I have found favor in your eyes, O king, and if it pleases the kind, let my life be granted to me as my request and my people as my petition…” (Esther 7:4).
Ahasuerus was so upset that anyone would want to harm his beloved queen’s people that he was momentarily overwhelmed. (He eventually had Haman executed and appointed Mordechai as his trusted government minister in his place.)
Esther tenacity, spirituality, resiliency, and ability to read other people’s emotions continue to live on in Jewish women today.
As we celebrate International Women’s Day, let’s recall how the Jews of the ancient Persian city of Shushan (today’s Susa in modern day Iran) continued to fight, battling their enemies until the threat of genocide was eradicated, and celebrate the bravery and perseverance of Queen Esther.
Featured Image: Unsplash.com, Adam Flockemann
