The first time that anyone mentions Jews or Jewishness is in 2:5, when we meet a Jewish man named Mordechai. We learn his lineage going back to the Babylonian exile\u2014I want to take a moment and look at 2:6, where the text describes Mordechai\u2019s great-grandfather \u201chad been carried away from Jerusalem with the captivity which had been carried away with Jeconiah king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away.\u201d That\u2019s the KJV, but all the translations have trouble with the fact that the word galah<\/i> in various forms is used four times in that verse. So the identification is two-fold: there\u2019s a bloodline and there\u2019s an experience of exile.\r\n
The next reference to Jewishness is in 2:10, when Esther does not announce \u201cher people nor her kindred\u201d, neither her am<\/i> nor her moledet<\/i>. What is the difference? An am<\/i> is a unit of people, a tribe or nation; moledet<\/i> is specifically the genetic relations (as the word is related to childbirth). To some extent, \u201cpeople and kindred\u201d seems to be a kind of stock phrase, but I think it\u2019s worth noticing that the two are used together to mean something more than either alone. But it\u2019s also worth noticing that while am<\/i> means a group of people, it is etymologically rooted in a \u2018gathering\u2019, in the act of coming together. While of course Esther\u2019s am<\/i> are in exile, and not gathered together at all.\r\n
The next big reference to Jewishness is in the part of the story where Mordechai refuses to bow down to Haman\u2014and when I was reading this closely, I discovered something I hadn\u2019t noticed before: Mordechai never directly tells Haman that he\u2019s a Jew, and never directly says that he refuses to do homage because he is Jewish.\r\n
\u201cAnd all the king's servants, that were in the king's gate, bowed, and reverenced Haman: for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence. Then the king's servants, which were in the king's gate, said unto Mordecai, Why transgressest thou the king's commandment? Now it came to pass, when they spake daily unto him, and he hearkened not unto them, that they told Haman, to see whether Mordecai's matters would stand: for he had told them that he was a Jew.\u201d (3:2-4)<\/blockquote>\r\n
Mordechai in fact never speaks to Haman directly, and we don\u2019t even hear Mordechai telling those other unnamed people that his disobedience is connected to his Jewishness. He had, at some point, told them he was a Jew (or so they said) and they revealed that to Haman (the same verb is used there as with Esther not revealing it in the previous chapter) to see what would happen. And Haman decides to destroy all the Jews, not just Mordechai alone, because of what they said.\r\n
When Haman goes to Ahasueros to destroy the Jews, he defines them: \u201cThere is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from all people; neither keep they the king's laws\u201d. So there are two important things here: they are scattered and dispersed, and they have strange laws. There is no mention in this bit about their blood, just their peoplehood (am echad<\/i>).\r\n
Then the story moves on, and there is very little about who is Jewish or not or what that means until a slight reference that Haman\u2019s wife makes to Mordechai as \u201cseed of the Jews\u201d in chapter six, which is very clearly a bloodline\/genetic comment. And then in Esther\u2019s plea to Ahasueros (7:4), she says \u201cI and my people\u201d (anee v\u2019amee) are sold to slaughter\u2014it is just her people, not her people and her kindred. But after Haman has been killed, in the plea for all the Jews, she reverts to both amee<\/i> and moladetee<\/i>, people and kindred.\r\n
Which is all fine, so far\u2014that is, it\u2019s a complete muddle, and Jews are both a kindred and a people, and they are dispersed and have strange laws, but it isn\u2019t made clear what they are or what that means, and also people talk about them in different terms than they use to talk about themselves. But basically, like it is now, Jews are both a \u201crace\u201d in some vaguely genetic sense of that extremely fraught word, and also a \u201cpeople\u201d who are defined by their adherence to each other despite geographic dispersal. Right? And the details of it are extremely vague.\r\n
Now it gets more interesting. Well, to me, anyway.\r\n
When the Jews are given permission to kill their putative slaughterers\u2014they are specifically told to gather themselves together and kill and despoil their enemies\u2014there are many \u201cpeople of the land\u201d (amay ha\u2019aretz<\/i>) who become Jews\u2014it\u2019s an odd sort of verbing-noun that kind of means they are Jew-ized (8:17). This, on the face of it, means that they are \u201cJews of choice\u201d, that they are non-Jews who become part of the Jewish people without the genetic part. Right? That\u2019s a big emphasis shift. Or, perhaps, it isn\u2019t\u2014in later usage, an am ha\u2019aretz<\/i> is an uneducated and non-observant Jew. Perhaps this is an early version of that usage, and they are actually saying that Jews who had assimilated were inspired to become, well, Jew-ized, to learn and to do what Jews do. Maybe not! But maybe.\r\n
Which leads back to the question: What do Jews do?<\/i> Because so far (and we\u2019re nearly done) there really isn\u2019t anything that is clearly done by Esther or even by Mordechai that is Jewish<\/i>, specifically. They don\u2019t, at least that is mentioned in the text, keep kosher. They don\u2019t, at least mentioned in the text, wear different clothes. They don\u2019t go to shul\u2014this is before the siddur, but they don\u2019t gather with other Jews to perform any permitted rituals outside the (currently destroyed) Temple. They don\u2019t pray. They certainly don\u2019t eat bagels and lox. What do<\/i> they do? When all those people became Jews, how did their lives change? Did they become exiles in their own land? How could anyone tell?\r\n
And then, after the narrative is over, almost at the very end of the book, we have this:\r\n
And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters unto all the Jews that were in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, both nigh and far, To stablish this among them, that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same, yearly, As the days wherein the Jews rested from their enemies, and the month which was turned unto them from sorrow to joy, and from mourning into a good day: that they should make them days of feasting and joy, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor. And the Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai had written unto them; [\u2026] Wherefore they called these days Purim after the name of Pur. The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them, so as it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to their writing, and according to their appointed time every year; And that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and that these days of Purim should not fail from among the Jews, nor the memorial of them perish from their seed. 9:20-23, 26-28 <\/blockquote>\r\n
I think that\u2019s probably as good a model for Diaspora Jewishness as anything else. Celebrate the holidays. Remember the stories. Share food.\r\n\r\n\r\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger tries to keep the stuff about slaughtering people to a minimum.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[219],"class_list":["post-20717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripture","tag-purim"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20719,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20717\/revisions\/20719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}