Esther

Queen Esther, also called Hadassah, the heroine of the biblical Book of Esther, is considered one of the pivotal females in scripture because, according to Jewish tradition, she was divinely ordained to save her people from genocide. Physical beauty and great courage were combined in her to such a degree that she merited having her name immortalized by becoming part of the Hebrew biblical canon. The narrative of this post-exilic book also provides the etiology of Purim, the carnival-like holiday that Jews celebrate every spring with much merriment even in the early-twenty-first century.

STORY OF ESTHER AND SIGNIFICANCE AS A HEROINE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

Contemporary scholars prefer to read the Book of Esther as a comedy, romance, even a fairy tale, downplaying any verisimilitude to ancient (Achaemenid Empire) or medieval Persian (Islamic/oriental) court life and deeming the story's plot to be "structured on improbabilities, exaggerations, misunderstandings, and reversals." Even if "the setting of the Persian court is authentic … the events are fictional" as no corroborating sources of the events has ever surfaced (Berlin and Brettler 2004, pp. 1623-1624).

In brief the plot of the Book of Esther centers on Esther's fairy-tale-like good fortune, a destiny that transcends mere personal dimensions through the divine plan (although God is not mentioned in the Book of Esther) that turns her into a savior of her people. An orphan, Esther was raised by her cousin Mordekai. When King Ahasuerus repudiated Vashti, his first wife, because she had disobeyed him, Esther was among the virgins brought to the court and Ahasuerus chose her as his next queen. On the advice of Mordekai, Esther kept her Jewish identity hidden. When Haman, Ahasuerus' prime minister, convinced the king to issue an edict condemning the Jews to extermination, Esther presented herself before the king unbidden (an act punishable by death) and invited him and Haman to two banquets. Haman, thinking himself in the queen's good graces, was totally unprepared for her powerful intercession at the second banquet on behalf of her people. Revealing her origins Queen Esther begged for and was granted the lifting of the edict as well as revenge against Haman. The reversal that ensued, that is, the saving of the Jews and the elevation of Mordekai, and the fall and death of Haman, his family, and many of his party who persecuted the Jews, forms the dramatic linchpin of the narrative.

Numerous details enhance the biblical account, which highlight Ahasuerus' credulity, Haman's arrogance, Mordekai's cleverness, and Esther's beauty and loyalty to her faith. More embellishments appear in the Septuagint (LXX) version of the Book of Esther and many more in Jewish rabbinic and legendary (midrashic) sources. The Septuagint version is a much longer version of the narrative and contains six large additions as well as a number of details not found in the Masoretic text. It deemphasizes the comic and stresses the melodramatic elements and it is considerably more concerned with issues of Jewish ritual. Jerome (d. 420) added the larger segments at the end of his translation of the book. In the Jewish rabbinic and legendary (midrashic) texts, which range from the second to the fourteenth centuries, Esther's character, both physical and psychological, is richly enhanced. Thus Esther herself is of royal blood, a descendant of King Saul, worthy of royal marriage. She is one of the four most beautiful women in the world (the other three, also in the Bible, being Sarah, Rahab, and Abigail), and her beauty flourished unabated throughout her life. However Esther's spiritual characteristics surpass her physical ones, the latter being mere reflections of the former. "Esther put on royal apparel" (Esth. 5:1) is traditionally interpreted as referring to her being wrapped in the Holy Spirit. Troubled by the marriage of such a paragon to a gentile monarch, even in the cause of saving her people, rabbinical texts try to explain away the marriage as a formality without substance, outright rape, or, in an extreme instance, by claiming that Ahasuerus made love only to "to a female spirit in the guise of Esther" (Ginzberg, 4:387; 6:640n. 79; 4:387-388; 6:460n. 80).

ESTHER AS A FIGURE IN LITERATURE AND ART AND CONTEMPORARY LEGACY

Since Esther is an Iranian heroine, it is not surprising that Iranian Jews have preserved her memory with great devotion. A shrine in Hamadan, Iran, grew up around a tomb purported to contain the cenotaphs of Esther and Mordekai, which dates no earlier than the thirteenth century. It became a frequent pilgrimage destination for Iranian Jews. Esther's memory is also preserved in two fourteenth-century Judeo-Persian (Fars? in Hebrew letters) epics, Ardash?r-n?ma (The book of Ardash?r [Ahasuerus]), and Ezra-n?ma (The book of Ezra) by the Iranian Jewish poet Mowl?n? Sh?h?n. Familiar with both the biblical and rabbinic narratives, Sh?h?n composed his own version of the Books of Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah by creating an audacious link between Esther's marriage and the fate of the Jewish people. According to Sh?h?n, the purpose of Esther's happy marriage to Ahasuerus (preceded by an elaborate courtship and properly sanctified in a Zoroastrian wedding ceremony) was to give birth to Cyrus the Great (559–530 bce), the king who issued the famous edict (539 bce) granting permission to many minorities, including the Jews of Babylonia (western Iran), to return to their homeland and rebuild their Temple. Thus in Sh?h?n's account, Esther's role as savior is much broader and fully justifies her marriage to a gentile monarch.

Sh?h?n's epic is only one of the numerous works of art inspired by the Book of Esther in general and Esther in particular. Her beauty, courage, and self-sacrifice are celebrated in numerous paintings, beginning with those in the third-century Dura-Europos synagogue and culminating with representations by famous Renaissance painters, such as Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445–1510), Filipino Lippi (c.1458–1504), Jacopo Tintoretto (c. 1518–1594), and Paolo Veronese (ca.1528–1588), who all tended to associate her with the cult of the Virgin Mary. Musicians such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594) and George Frederick Handel (1685–1759) wrote motets and oratorios inspired by the tale, and playwrights as famous as Jean Racine (1639–1699) recast the narrative in dramatic form. In Jewish tradition Purim plays flourished from the early Middle Ages onwards setting the narrative into dramatic and musical forms, some of which have survived in Hebrew and Yiddish. The contemporary tendency of feminist biblical scholarship to view Esther in a more nuanced light has further enhanced her stature. A trickster's manipulative conduct, coupled with seductive beauty, are viewed to have been part of Esther's only available means to carry out her unselfish purpose through powerful but vulnerable men. To her enduring credit, she employed these means in the service of divine aims.

see also Judaism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berlin, Adele, and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds. 2004. "Esther." In The Jewish Study Bible. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Brenner, Athalya, ed. 1995. A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith and Susanna. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press Ltd.

Ginzberg, Louis. 1968 (1913–1938). Legends of the Jews. 7 vols. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America.

Moreen, Vera B., trans. 2000. In Queen Esther's Garden: An Anthology of Judeo-Persian Literature. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Walfish, Barry Dov. 1993. Esther in Medieval Garb: Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Esther in the Middle Ages. Albany: State University of New York Press.

                                            Vera B. Moreen