Purim is often seen as the children’s festival. ‘Come to us for a Purim party’, we are told, ‘get your child’s fancy dress costume from this website’, ‘Put fruit in your child’s mishloach manot gift’ and get them to ‘decorate your hamentaschen’. Purim was my favourite festival when I was young. I loved the fancy dress parade, decorating the Mishloach Manot box, being encouraged to shout and scream during assembly and the Megillah reading. I loved that at my Jewish Day School Purim was a day separate from the rest of the year, we even used to be given orange juice to drink instead of water for school dinners! However, as I’ve got older, I’ve realised that the festival of Purim is for so much more than the kids! It’s also a festival for women as well.
I am blessed to be from a long line of strong women. My maternal Grandmother grew up during the Blitz, was a widow before she was fifty and carried on working up in the city as a legal secretary until she was seventy-six. She was stubborn but strong, amazingly modern yet traditional (she never used the washing machine on Shabbat!) and was a wonderful listener. She always gave me advice but never told me what I should do. My mother too was a strong woman. Having lost her father only a few months before she married, she organised her wedding, stood up to a difficult mother in law, nursed a very sick child, ran a home, held down a full time job, and kept us all moving as a family. My mother and grandmother thankfully, are not isolated cases of women who were strong. There are women throughout history who have found themselves in vulnerable positions because of their gender and sought against all odds to challenge this perception.
In the Book of Esther, the two female protagonists, Vashti and Esther take a stand against this position. Vashti pays a high price for her dignity when she is banished from the palace for refusing to dance at the king’s drinking party. Esther, who is chosen as Vashti’s successor in a beauty pageant, fears for her very life in approaching the king without his express request to see her. In Ancient Shushan, women are expendable, merely objects to entertain or to be admired, and can be disposed of at will. The men of the story worry what might happen if women are given too much free will? Memuchan (who the Talmud claims is actually Haman), one of Ahashverosh officers, warns the king of the dire consequences of Vashti’s rebellion:
Queen Vashti has committed an offense not only against Your Majesty but also against all the officials and against all the peoples in all the provinces of King Ahashverosh. For the queen’s behaviour will make all wives despise their husbands, as they reflect that King Ahashverosh himself ordered Queen Vashti to be brought before him, but she would not come…. If it pleases Your Majesty, let a royal edict be issued by you, and let it be written into the laws of Persia
Memuchan’s anxiety about what would happen if women did not have the proper respect for their husbands seems humorous to us now, but in fact, our world is not so different from the world of Shushan. Discrimination and violence against women are both national and communal problems. Jewish Women’s Aid states that 25% of women will be a victim of domestic abuse in their lifetime. Furthermore they estimate that two women each week are killed by their husbands or partners and that every minute of every day a woman calls the police to report an incident of abuse. With statistics like these, it is important to look at the actions of Esther and Vashti, to understand the world in which they lived and more importantly to understand that some women still live in this kind of environment, an environment where to speak out has a dire consequence. Jewish Women’s Aid and the National End Violence against Women (EVAW) Campaign aim to encourage women to be strong and speak out against this violence and injustice as well as for violence against women to be understood as a cause and consequence of women's inequality.
So whilst I don’t intend to dampen the notion that Purim is a joyful festival that is about the children and a great way to engage your children in being Jewish, it is also about the Vashti’s and Esther’s of the 21st century who are controlled and live in fear of their partners. So if you do one thing Jewish this Purim that isn’t for your children, think about how you can raise awareness of domestic violence in your community because it is in your community, somewhere.
I enjoyed your blog post. You are right - the story of Purim is actually more for women than children.
ReplyDeleteI have always respected Vashti and thought that she is not getting the credit she deserves. Thanks for putting her on an equal footing with Esther.