Volume 2                                     2015 – D.v.D.                                               #23

><> SHABBAT -- פָורים -- MUSINGS <><

Thought for the Weekend of Adar 8 & 9, 5775

[Thinking About Adar 14 & 15 (Purim)]    .

.

By Rev. Dirk J. van Dalen, Ph.D.       [February, 28, 2015]       – Dr.vandalen@gmail.com

For Such a Time as This, Instead of Looking at The Torah Portion, We’ll Look at The Story of פָורים (Purim).

If it Hadn’t Been…

Esther remains the protagonist in the book that bears her name and Adonai’s finger prints of providence are all over the pages but God’s name is never mentioned. If it hadn’t been for a disobedient wife who rightly refused her royal husband to take part in a less than wholesome activity, the Book of Esther may have never been written because there wouldn’t have been a Queen Esther. “And when these days were completed, the king made a feast lasting seven days for all the people who were present in Shushan…” (Es.1: 5)

The King’s stag party had lasted about a week and by the time his nobles and government officials began to argue about which women were the prettiest; the Median, the Chaldean, or the Persian, His Royal Highness was stoned out of his mind (Est. 1: 10). They had begun to brag about how many women of each nation they had “entertained” and about the women’s “performance.”

Vashti was totally aware of the foibles of those characters and their practices. She wanted no part of it. She was having a good time with the females of the Royal Household and was not about to be humiliated again by the king and his ilk, even if he’s her husband. “I’m not going,” she informed the 7-eunuch retrieval party that came to get her (Est. 1: 12) “I am not going and stand there hearing them crow, ‘take it off, take it all off.’”

The dumbfounded eunuchs who had come to fetch her stood in disbelief as the women with Vashti heard her say the words. There was no anger in them, just resolve. To be respected, one needs to show respect. The King had failed miserably in that area. She didn’t go. The punishment for the refusal to appear at the King’s party was to be never again being allowed in his presence. Vashti realizing that she could have been executed was elated. Never again did she have to degrade herself before her husband’s court by having to disrobe in front of them. How disgusting that had been, she had learned her lesson.

What we learn from Vashti is that she set boundaries for herself where it concerned her horizontal relationships. She was no doormat instead, she became an inspiration to the women around her, she may be seen as the role model for appropriate self-assertion. “And Mordecai, a Jew, had brought up Hadassah, i.e. Esther, his cousin for she was an orphan…Esther had not revealed that she was Jewish for Mordecai had charged her not to reveal her ethnic identity.” (Est. 2: 5- 10) The King who now considers himself divorced issued an executive order to organize a national beauty pageant. The winner would be crowned as Miss Persia aka the

Queen or Mrs. Ahasuarus.

Mordecai had done a commendable job in bringing up his cousin Hadassah who, as the typical Jewish girl, far surpassed the Persian natives in intelligence, poise, and common sense. In addition to being lovely and beautiful, she was educated and thus literate, which wouldn’t go unnoticed by the king.

We don’t rightly know if the women had been rounded up by the King’s “talent scouts” or, whether Hadassah had volun-tarily made her way to the citadel in Shushan after hearing of the King’s edict. We know that Mordecai insisted that she changed her name to obscure her ethnicity. She entered the bridal contest and the royal spa of King Ahasuarus as Esther. She immediately obtained the favor of Hegai, the superintendant of women. From the moment Esther arrived he seemed to be mentoring her as she underwent her extreme makeover although she already was a natural beauty. And, as a Jewish girl, she was the only literate woman in the palace. “Now when the turn came for Esther…to go before the king, she requested nothing but what Hegai…advised. And Esther obtained favor in the sight of all who saw her.” (Est. 2: 15)

After a year of beauty treatments and applicable education, such as the shaping and polishing of regal and social graces, the audience with the king was the final stage in the selection process. Each of her predecessors in the line-up had been an esthetic knock-out worthy of adorning the front page of Vogue Magazine. But, even during the fifth Century BCE, Ahasuarus may have considered that “beauty is only skin deep.” The King is impressed and the Empire of Persia has a Queen again. The time was ca. 479 BCE.

Now it came to pass,… that Esther needed to reveal her true identity “for such a time as this” as an anti-Semitic voice in government was about to make itself heard. This would be the ‘umteenth’ attempt by HaSatan to annihilate - or at least severely disrupt – the line from which Messiah would come. Just as Queen Vashti had put her life on the line by ignoring the King’s summons to appear, Queen Esther would do so by appearing before the king without being summoned (Est. 4: 11) rationalizing that she proclaimed, “if I perish, I perish!”

Esther, with about five years experience as Queen, knew that she had to prepare the heart and mind (compassion and common sense) of her husband before she should approach him with “her” problem (remember that ladies). As the first edict could not be altered or rescinded according to Persian law, a second one from the King but authored by Mordecai would virtually deflate the first one as an armed Jew in conflict will always prevail.

><>  Y  <><

Think About It, Shabbat Shalom!