Shadow Selves in Megillat Esther

In chapter 1 of the book of Esther, we meet King Achashverosh and Queen Vashti. In chapter 2, we meet a second pair, a second man and woman: Mordechai and Esther. 

The King is a fool. He is drunk. He is out of control. His impulsive demands lead to dire consequences. The Queen is independant-minded and disobedient. 

These two represent the exact opposite to the man and woman we meet in chapter 2:

Mordechai is very careful and controlled. He instructs Esther not to reveal her Jewish identity. He walks in front of the harem, trying to gather information about Esther, because without information he cannot control the situation. He commands Esther in chapter 4 to go into the king. He is in control of himself, and he is in control of Esther.

Esther is obedient. She does what Mordechai commands her. 

Achashverosh and Vashti represent their Shadow selves, the selves that Mordechai and Esther push down out of sight - though they are still there, working away in the subconscious. But as the story progresses, the Shadow selves emerge.

Esther ceases to simply obey Mordechai. She does not rebel, but she does take matters into her own hands and begin to implement her own plan. When this happens, Mordechai is no longer in control - he cedes control to Esther and ultimately to the Divine Providence that brings Haman knocking at the King's door that fateful night. 

When working with our Shadow selves, the parts of us that frighten us or are not known to our conscious minds, the idea is not to go to the other extreme and transform into that self (lack of control, wild rebellion etc). It is rather to bring them up in such a way that they are healthily integrated into the rest of our personality, and we are no longer afraid of being that way.

*This insight was gained while doing Bibliodrama, Adar 5782.

Memuchan and Haman

The midrash likes to take two separate biblical characters and suggest they are one and the same person. This is also true of Memuchan, the advisor to King Achashverosh in Esther chapter 1, whom the Midrash declares is none other than Haman (officially, Haman only makes an appearance in chapter 3). 

Why conflate the two? Perhaps because we don't know why the King favours Haman and promotes him in Esther 3:1 - and Memuchan's advice was so appealing to the King that it would make sense that he would rise in the ranks. There are other lines of similarity as pointed out by Yaacov Bronstein here.

But it is also striking that both Memuchan and Haman both wished to disempower and destroy minorities. Memuchan wanted all women to obey their husbands, and never to show independent thought or rebel. Haman wanted to eliminate the pesky Mordechai who refused to obey the king's command and bow to him - and to take his stiff-necked, irritatingly different brethren with him. 

In the end, a woman, Esther, takes away all of Haman's power and brings about his death. And the Jews live on for many centuries and eventually return in joy to their ancient homeland, while Amalek has disappeared from the earth. 

* This insight arose while doing Bibliodrama, Adar 5782.

4 Banim, and Why I am Not Choosing to Become a Rabbi

My truth tends to emerge from my experience.

The traditional assumed evolution of the Arba banim in the Haggadah is from last to first: from the One Who Does Not Know How to Ask, to the Simple, to the Wicked, to the Clever. But my lived experience suggests the reverse direction: according to the order in which they are actually written.

For years I struggled with typecasting as the clever child. I was the intellectual, and to the extent that I could do that successfully, I was given a place in the world. Had I been a man, I would have become a rabbi. Being a woman freed me to take my journey with fewer prying eyes, fewer consequences.

In my late twenties, I carefully began to discover the wicked child in me, questioning the existing order, make changes in my dress and my thinking. Thus I evolved and still do. The wicked child continues to live in me, occasionally racing around and roaring inside; but she has become part of the whole. As I hit middle age, I aim to run with the wolves. That’s still a work in progress.

In my late thirties I discovered meditation. I was taught to approach the world with beginners’ mind, “What’s this?” My journey of rejecting the intellect and embracing my experience and the body became more full and rich. I evolved again. learned to know life biblically rather than in a western mode. I’m still learning how to ask “What’s this?” or “Tell me about you,” and practice listening to the other’s perspective cleanly, without bringing all the baggage and assumptions the wicked and the clever child bring.

Now I am wondering if perhaps the end point is to get to a place where you don’t even ask. You sit in silence, and let the other person tell you what they choose to. At the end of the book of Job, after all of his fierce questions, G-d appears in a whirlwind and gives him no answers, just a full-on experience, opening his eyes to creation. Job stops asking his questions. Something changes; he repents and is silent. He even "forgets" how to ask; he has become an experiencer, who learns simply by taking in the Being of all things.

In one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, Siddhartha transitions from being a young man, religiously talented, arrogant, (“I can think, I can wait, I can fast”), to a man of the world, rich, a gambler, with a lover, and finally to an old man sitting by the river, ever listening for its message. I believe Herman Hesse would concur that the evolution of the Arba Banim is actually in the reverse direction as I argue, as exemplified in the life of Siddhartha.

Perhaps the above answers why I haven’t chosen to become a rabbi now that the doors have opened to Orthodox women, despite my obviously leanings in that direction. Orthodox ordination would take me in the opposite direction to my life journey. When being a rabbi comes to mean asking “What’s this” – or not asking at all, just listening, just being – then I may consider it. Till then, I am content with my journey.

Why Don't We Just Tell the Story?

For years now, I've been wondering why we don't actually read over the Exodus story at the Seder, considering that this is the essential act of the night?

Why instead do we get the story piecemeal throughout the first part of the Haggada, in fragments, interspersed with all kinds of other random paragraphs containing other things (rabbis sitting in Bnei Brak, four children, ma nishtana etc) which, though interesting, are not the actual story? It's true that the Hagaddah may well be "the story about the story",  or "instructions to tell the story" which is very nice - but what happened to the story itself?

Good questions are like fine wine, they improve with age, they sit and stew until something emerges. 

This year I did my Seder alone due to the coronavirus, so I had the time and possibility to insert whatever I liked into the Seder ritual.  I told myself aloud the story of the Exodus, to see how it felt to do so (it felt ok, but a bit bare). Afterwards, as I was reading the Haggada, I noticed with greater clarity the pieces of the story that do appear, scattered throughout. 

And a sudden insight arose for me. Our life stories do not come linearly and clearly, with each day building upon the previous one in a way where we see how it fits in. Instead, our narratives develop in a windy and unclear way, with detours, seemingly irrelevant passages, obscure incidents. It is only when we look back from much further down the line that we can actually make our story coherent, and tell it in a way that it has a start and a middle (and perhaps an end.)

Right now, for example, we are in the middle of the coronavirus story. We are able to tell the beginning, but as we are still very much in the middle, we only have access to fragments of the ongoing plot, and certainly no clue about the end.

The Haggada is a reflection of the messiness of how our stories develop. As such, it holds a more profound message than a straight up story told directly would.

So I FINALLY have an answer that speaks to me. Ahh, that feels good.

The Essence of the Megillah - Achashverosh?!

There is an interesting Mishnah that says:

Mishnah Megillah 2:3: …From where does one read the megillah and fulfill the obligation? R’ Meir says, Read all of it. R’ Judah says, from “There was a certain Jew” (2:5). R’ Yossi says, from “After these things” (3:1).

This is rather odd. How could we start reading the megillah from anywhere but the beginning, and understand its plot? What is the meaning of "fulfilling the obligation" from points other than at the beginning?


The gemara adds a fourth position, and an explanation:

B. Talmud Megillah 19a: "R' Simeon bar Yohai says, from “On that night" (6:1). R’Yohanan says, All derive their interpretation from the same verse: “Then Esther the queen, the daughter of Abihail and of Mordecai the Jew, wrote down all the acts of power ['kol tokef,' or all the power or essence]" (9:29). For those who say read the entire Megillah, the essence is Ahasuerus. For those who say read from “There was a certain Jew” the essence is Mordecai. For those who say read from "After these things," the essence is Haman. For those who say read from "On that night," the essence is the miracle of Purim.'"

So the question is what the essence of the megillah?
I took a vote amongst a group of Jewish friends, and none of them voted that the essence of the megillah is Achashverosh. And yet that is how we pasken, as Rabbi Meir - that you have to start from the very beginning.

So how is the essence of the megillah Achashverosh? I think this is one of those questions which is stronger than the answers, but here are some possibilities:

My cousin's husband, Rabbi Da'vid Sperling, had the folllowing insight while discussing this question at the Purim seuda, 5780: Those who think the essence of the megillah is Mordechai (or indeed the Purim miracle) see God's hand behind the good things that occur to us. That is one level. A higher level is to see God's hand behind the evil things that happen to us - represented here by Haman. But the highest level of all, the essence of life, is to see God behind events that do not seem to have anything to do with us at all - in this case Achashverosh, his parties and his problems with his queen. At the highest level, God is orchestrating everything, and everything affects everything else. This is why the essence of the megillah is Achashverosh.


Another answer: while doing a bibliodrama on Esther Chapter 1 with the women's shiur of Bet Yosef, Jerusalem. Miriam Pomeranz noted that this king showed much flexibility, throughout the development of events, and managed to hold on to his position till the end. That made me think about the profound truth of this statement: while everyone else is either elevated (Mordechai. Esther, the Jews) or brought low/eliminated (Vashti, Haman, his sons, his wife), Achashverosh remains in the same basic position througout. That is no small thing.

We know that Achashverosh is compared in the megillah symbolically to the King of Kings, God. So a lesson that emerges from this is: when everything in the world is disrupted, and some are brought low while others suddenly find themselves unexpectedly powerful - and this is inevitably the case in the bigger picture, no one remains on top forever - God alone remains on an even keel - always God, always king.

And a final thought, relating to the human Achashverosh, is that unlike Haman who is cold, ruthless, angry to the point of becoming completely unhinged, Achashverosh always remains very human. He is drunk, he is angry and humiliated, but he also has a soft heart when it comes to Esther and wants to give to her and love her. Therefore, though he agrees to Haman's desire to kill the Jews, he is ultimately not our enemy, even if he is a bit morally spineless. Having a soft heart is a praiseworthy thing in Jewish thought (apart from when going to war). So this too might be a reason why we must begin with Achashverosh. And this humanness might be also why God can use him as his emissary שליח for his divine plan - why he merits to have that happen, despite all of his flaws.


Along these lines, this year, I wrote this piece [1]:

Well my name’s Achashverosh, yes you like to put me down

But in Megillat Esther it is I who bestow the crown,

My hands are God’s hands, my eyes God’s eyes,

My self the throne of glory, all thinly disguised.

Can YOU call yourself the vessel of the divine?

Or do you see with small brains, drawing a thick line

between finite and infinite, human and transcendent

never realizing it’s all interdependant

Throughout the megilla, my face is a mask

And G-d looks through it as I do His task,

Fool I might be, but my soft heart’s circumcised,

While Haman, clever, ruthless – is, I believe, demised.

He’s pushing up the daisies, he's completely expired

He’s ceased to be, he’s definitely retired

He's a stiff, kicked the bucket! Admit it, come on!

He’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil!! THIS IS AN EX-HAMAN!


[1] The idea of our eyes being as God's eyes in this world comes from Recanati's interpretation of the verse "an eye for an eye", which I heard quoted by Yitzhak Attias. The final lines of the verse are a reference to the Monty Python dead parrot sketch. I find it amusing to imagine Achashverosh pining for the fjords.