The Exodus & Purim: Similar Stories?

At the end of the month we will be celebrating Purim. The source for the festival of Purim is the Book of Esther. But this book, which is often referred to as a scroll, or in Hebrew, megillah, almost didn’t make it to become part of the Hebrew bible. In the long and arduous process of canonization (deciding which books should be considered holy and become part of the bible), many ancient rabbis rendered the Book of Esther unfit, and there are some good arguments for that.

To start, God, who is mentioned in the bible thousands of times is not mentioned in the Book of Esther even once. Furthermore, the historicity of the book is problematic. Even if we associate King Ahasuerus with the known Persian king, Xerxes, we still have no reference to Haman, Mordechai, Vashti, or even Esther. Xerxes’ wife, in Persian sources, was Amestris. Most importantly is that the Jewish characters in the book don’t live Jewishly. Esther and Mordechai are named after pagan deities (Ishtar and Marduk). And, until the end, Esther hides her Jewishness even from her husband, the king. Mordechai encouraged her to compete to become part of the king’s harem, not a typical dream of Jewish parents, and she married outside of her faith.

So why was the megillah included in the Bible at the end?

Since Purim is early this year, I happened to read the Book of Esther while I was reading the story of the Exodus, which is part of the regular Torah cycle. Reading the two unrelated stories together revealed many similarities:

In both stories, the Jews are in exile and their existence is threatened.The Pharaoh wanted to kill their children and Ahasuerus, influenced by Haman, had a day on the calendar for their extermination.

The savior of the Jews spent part of his and her life in the royal palace—Moses was raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter and Esther married the king. Both cared little about their people until they witness the mortal danger of their predicament. Moses saw the suffering that resulted from slavery and Esther learned about the fatal destiny of her people.

In both stories, women play a major role, a rarity in the bible, and they are smart, brave, and never miss an opportunity to save lives—the midwives in Egypt who refused to kill the Jewish males, Pharaoh’s daughter who saved Moses’ life as did his mother and sister, and we meet Ahasuerus’ first wife, Vashti, who chose to be dethroned rather than lose her dignity, and of course, Esther, who risked her life to save the Jews.

Both stories have inspired generations of Jews all over the world to keep going during pogroms and cruel acts of anti-semitism. Just as the Jews in Egypt were liberated and the Jews of Persia saved, so will they be. But still, why do we need the story of the Jews of Persia that describes a reality that is so far from what Judaism is supposed to be?

These two stories present different models of Jewish communities that existed in the past as well as in our days. The Exodus story describes people who tried to behave according to the laws God has given them. God was a visible part of their lives. They isolated themselves from the neighboring nations and wanted to leave the Egyptian exile and go back to their ancestral land. In the Book of Esther we see an almost opposite model. The Jews of Persia chose to stay in exile, they became part of the general society, and God was a matter of faith, not a constant presence. Many Jews who lived during the period of the canonization of the bible, under Greek and Roman control, felt much closer to the Jews of Persia than to the Jews of Egypt. When they needed inspiration and hope, the model of the Exodus was too foreign to them, but the fact that God saved the Jews of Persia, who were much closer to them in practice, indicated to them that God will not abandon them. The rabbis who made the final decision to include the Book of Esther in the bible perhaps did not approve of its form of Judaism, but nevertheless accepted it as a reality for their time and for the future.