ESTHER? THE POLITICS: THE BOOK EXPLORES ALL OPTIONS…BUT ONE?
by Bryan Schwartz, March 22, 2024
Here in the Diasporas, Jewish identity and thriving are under attack.
Some Christian church organizations routinely vilify Israel. One common motivation is to overcome their shame about the past ravages of Christian antisemitism. “If the Jews, given power, turn out to be Nazis, we do not have to feel bad about that whole Holocaust thing.” Many in the flock are not sure about the divinity of Jesus, or even the existence of the Creator, but they are certain that Israel is worthy of their contempt.
Other Christian organizations are staunch supporters of Israel’s right to exist. Their philosemitism arises in part from the ongoing reverence of their members for the bible – including the Jewish scriptures as well as the Gospels (written mostly by Jews and about Jews, especially Jesus).
The demography of Canada is changing. Jews are a dwindling percentage, Muslims an increasing one. Some Muslims are influenced by interpretations of Islam that are theologically antisemitic, some others by the anti-Israel politics of their original countries. As with Christians, there are some Muslims who are sympathetic to Judaism and Israel’s right to exist. Potential positive factors could be Israel’s record as the only multicultural democracy in the region, or its stalwart resistance to Iranian imperialism and its proxies that threaten so many Arab peoples.
The most powerful religion in North America now, however, is wokeism. It dominates the universities, who in turn powerfully influence their students, many to the point of permanent indoctrination. Wokeists share with the regressive forms of Christianity and Islam a resolute hostility to Jews and Israel. Anyone doubting the realities should read David Bernstein’s recent book “Woke Antisemitism – How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews.”
Everywhere outside of Israel, Jews are a smaller and smaller part of their mainstream populations. With that, any voting clout they may have had is dwindling.
Within these Diaspora Jewish communities, there are loyal critics of aspects of doctrinal Judaism or the policies of Israel. Increasingly, however, there are many Jews who are detached from their origins and others who are actively hostile. These are generally Jews who have been insufficiently informed of their heritage or sufficiently intimidated by the ambient antisemitism. They describe themselves as “of Jewish heritage” or “technically Jewish” or “Jew-buts,” as in “I am Jewish, but I don’t believe any of it” or “I am Jewish, but I don’t agree with Israel…” The most hostile has been colourfully described as “Yidiots.”
Esther is about the options for surviving in a Diaspora Culture.
Hide. Mordecai initially instructs Esther to not reveal her Jewish origins. Disadvantage: you become what you pretend to be: not Jewish.
Go along to get along. Esther endears herself initially in the harem system by taking the advice of her counsellors and never asking for more than is offered. Disadvantage: you are silent and passive in the face of evil.
Play the inside game, court politics. Mordecai and Esther both become powerful figures in the King’s inner councils. They choose to use their influence, when needed, to protect their Jews from cruelty and destruction. This is what Esther did, at the risk of immediate execution. Disadvantage: you might help to serve a despotic regime. Practical reality: nowadays, many Jews in positions of power are so afraid of being criticized for parochial favouritism that they do nothing for Jewish causes or even tilt against them. Another practical reality: drawbridge Jews. You got in personally, but then you aggressively favour policies, like DEI, that go beyond fairness for all and are effectively antisemitic. The next generation of your fellow Jews will not have the opportunities you did. But that’s okay, you made it.
Passive resistance: Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman. Disadvantage: A risky move. He might have been expelled from the precincts of the capital or simply killed right away. Then where would he be when needed to prevent the genocide of Jews that Haman proposed to carry out?
Unite the Jewish community in active opposition to threats: Mordecai and Esther urge their fellow Jews through the empire to unite and rise – in the Purim case, violently – against their persecutors. Disadvantages: The open voicing of Jewish opposition can feed the antisemitic opinion and conduct of your enemies, who may be more powerful politically or militarily.
Leave: in the movie Oppenheimer, the Einstein character advises Oppenheimer to move away from his political problems, just as Einstein escaped from Europe before the Holocaust. Disadvantage: the next place might be hostile unless you are going to Israel. If you go to Israel, your state is treated as the world’s Jew, and you are threatened by powerful neighbours with physical extinction.
The “leave” option is not identified in the Book of Esther. Yet it may be the only one left for committed Jews in the Diaspora. Esther did not have a state of Israel or even a self-governing Jewish province, to which to return. We are not told expressly if she even dreams of such a Jewish haven.
Today, a sovereign Israel, however embattled, exists.
Is it finally time to go home?
ESTHER ! THE MUSICAL: HOW THE SOUNDS MATCH THE WORDS
by Bryan Schwartz, March 21, 2024
Remember your bar or bat mitzvah, and you had to learn to sing the squiggles? You know, the little marks – not the vowel points, the other ones – above and below beside the Hebrew words. These are called “cantillation marks” or “trope marks.”
Each mark signals a little musical figure. Think of “Over the Rainbow,” which has a very trope-y sound. (It was written by Harold Arlen, an orthodox Jew). It segments the lyrics into little pieces, each with a short melody. "Somewhere" …."over the rainbow” … " bluebirds fly." Give a written symbol for each little melody, and you will have a trope system. Then you could use it for any other set of words.
Some traditions say that it was not just words, but the music too, that Moses received at Sinai. As early as the second century, a sage is quoted as saying it is wrong to the Torah to recite it without musical sounds.
The marks you see on the scrolls we use today were established by the Masoretes, working over a thousand years ago. They also established the system of vowel points we use today.
The trope marks serve several purposes.
A primary function is punctuation. The trope marks serve like the periods, commas, and semi-colons work in English. They divide up passages into smaller units and indicate where the out-lead performer should pause, and for how long. In choosing a trope for a passage, the Masoretes sometimes could resolve ambiguities in meaning. Remember the joke about the violent Panda who walks into a bar and eats, shoots, and leaves?
The marks also amount to an interpretation of the spiritual and emotional nature of a written passage.
When we think of the Jewish tradition, we often think and write of it as written words on top of words. Words generate more words – commentaries, tales, formulations of halakha, the Jewish legal code. Superb modern scholars like James Kugel have written magisterial analyses of the bible from beginning to end, noting how these passages have been interpreted and reinterpreted through time…yet they take little note that the entire body of work has became the lyrics for a musical.
Different Jewish communities have varied in how they sing various trope marks. A Yemenite Jew in Israel singing the Esther scroll might sound very different from their Lubavitcher counterpart in Brooklyn. They are rendering the same trope marks, but the little melodies are different. The voices of the tropes do tend to share some similarities; if a trope in one tradition is a short upward melody, it is likely to be so in another. It is all rather like modern romance languages – you could probably infer they all derive from one or another variation of Latin. Or that soccer, American football, rugby, and Australian rules football have a common origin – they are all about two big teams, a rectangular field, and scoring points by kicking a ball through or over a set of goalposts.
I have been relearning to chant, with an Ashkenazi trope, a chapter of Esther, the musical detailing fits the text in every way. The trope marks are sung in a different way than for any other book. That is fitting because Esther is unique in many ways. It creates a holiday yet is not part of the five books of Moses that generally create holidays. It is set in a Diaspora without any mention of the possibility of return. It is funny. The humor is variously dark, wry, and farcical.
The book of Esther is the product of an anonymous human who chose every narrative detail and every word with precision.
The Esther trope system is also funny and chosen with precision. I have been relearning chapter seven. The main Esther trope has a light and cheerful vibe. In some passages, about the threatened destruction of the Jews, the trope rendition switches to the one used for the book of Lamentations. In the end, the singing switches to a triumphalist melody.
Now listen to some of the details. It evokes the ironies of the plot and the nature of the characters.
