BONUS EPISODE: The Purim War

This is a bonus episode with Ben and Matan that we recorded in response to the ongoing Iran War, which was launched a few days before the Jewish holiday of Purim. 

As the first bombs were being dropped from American and Israeli warplanes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech explicitly connecting the biblical story of Purim - a court drama in which Jews are threatened and then annihilate their enemy in Ancient Persia - with the attack on Iran.

Again, we're able to use the BAD COUSINS framework to analyze the ways that politicians use biblical and religious stories to explain, win support for, and push their own - often violent and chaotic - agendas.

Using the biblical sources and Elliot Horowitz's excellent 2008 book Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence, Matan connects the Abrahamic family to Haman, the antagonist of the Purim story, and explains the far-right Zionist perspective on Amalek, the vague enemy of all Jews.

Ben and Matan then discuss why the Purim story shouldn't be thrown out of the Jewish canon, despite the way it's used to justify so much violence, and find a few threads of hope and inspiration in the story and its characters.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to Bad Cousins. I'm Ben Schumann Stoller. Hi Matan. Hi. Here with Matan Kamener. As always, we're doing a bonus episode. Matan, why are we doing this bonus episode in between our usual narrative?

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Well, today is March 10th, and we're a week and a half into a war that the US and Israel started against Iran, spreading into Lebanon and uh elsewhere in the Middle East as we speak. And this war, um, like several others that we could mention, uh, has also been taking on biblical overtones. When when it was launched last Saturday, Netanyahu uh took to the media and said, My brothers and sisters, in two days we will celebrate the holiday of Purim. Two and a half thousand years ago in ancient Persia, a tyrant wrote rose against us with the very same goal to destroy our people completely. But Mordecai the Jew and Queen Esther, through their courage and resourcefulness, saved our people. In those days of Purim, the lot fell, and the wicked Haman fell with it. So, you know, this is really, I mean, right aparel, we could say.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

So he so he specifically calls out the Purim story. What is the Purim story and what is its significance then here?

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Okay. Well, Purim is a Jewish holiday. It's not a major Jewish holiday, it's one that's because it's called one of the minor holidays, but it has uh quite a bit of historical significance. I think it's also uh one of the more uh sort of um picturesque holidays that you know Jewish Jewish kids are are are always looking forward to. Um and it has this sort of carnivalesque element. It takes place around the same time as as carnival or Mardi Gras in the in the Catholic world, and it has many of the same sort of uh connotations, many of the same sort of implications in which you know uh uh things get turned upside down. Um people dress up, often uh cross-dress, you know, to the uh using the uh clothing uh belonging to uh people from the other genders or from other classes or even from other nationalities. Uh there is a strong element of also of getting drunk and getting violent on this holiday, even um in in some interpretations, it's a it's a commandment to do these sorts of things. And of course, there is the story, uh the book of Esther, which Netanyahu refers to. And that book is a uh a very lake part of the Bible. It's a very strange part of the Bible in many ways that we could that we could probably get into. Um, but it's definitely uh a strongly mythological part, and one which involves the story, as Netanyahu says, of uh Jews getting uh getting one over, defeating enemies, uh which happen to be uh historically happens to take place in Persia, which is of course Iran today.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

And then now you're bringing up a whole other story, but how does Purim relate to the Abraham story and what we've been discussing in Bad Cousins so far?

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Right, right. So far we've been talking about the story of Abraham, right? The family of Abraham, the family drama of Abraham. Now, the the the story of Esther is very different in a lot of ways. This, you know, Abraham Abraham's family is a is a is a patriarchal one living in the desert, uh, herding sheep, etc. Um, there are what you you would call Bedouin today. And the book of Esther takes place in a very different environment, which is this royal court, right? It's a very opulent court of a king who rules from India to Ethiopia in in a later historical period. But there is also a mythological through line, which is this which which is actually a family story. What one way of getting into this is is is through the the the story of Amalek, the this concept of Amalek, which I don't think we've really talked about so far in the show, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

We have not, but it's but we should.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Yeah. So Amalek is kind of the the original bad cousin, I would say. To emplace him or them uh on the family tree. So uh we've been talking mostly about the first generation, right? Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, Isaac. Um, but there's there's more generations in this family story, of course, and the the story, the plot continues to thicken. Isaac has two sons as well. They're named Esau and Jacob. Jacob becomes, of course, the father of the people of Israel. Esau um has children of his own, and one of his grandchildren is named Amalek. Now, when the when the children of Israel, the the descendants of Jacob, are are uh leaving Egypt, um, you know, they cross the the the Red Sea, they're they're fleeing uh Pharaoh and his and his soldiers, they're very tired, uh thirsty, and hungry, etc. And the first people that they meet when they after when they're when when they when they were in the desert are Amalek, and there's a battle. Um Amalek, who again are cousins, right? They're relatives, um, treat the Israelis, uh, sorry, the Israelites, uh uh horrendously, right? Um uh they're they're quite cruel in in battle. They they they attack uh uh old men, uh old women, children. Uh there are some insinuations, uh, as there always are in the later Jewish tradition about various uh sexual uh uh forms of misconduct. And most importantly, uh God declares that Amalek will be his enemy from from generation to generation and declares uh a mitzvah, declares a commandment for the Jewish people to destroy the people of Amalek. So there's really a very clear demand uh on the on the Bible's side to to act uh uh in a way that we can can't call any anything other than genocidal towards Amalek. Now, the point, our point here, and there is a point here, is that Haman, this evil Persian leader, um who is the the main antagonist in the book of Esther, is an Agagite. It's said in the book. And Agag is one of the descendants in the Bible of Amalek, right? He's a king, he's a king of the people of Amalek, who also has a uh has a battle with the Saul ing Saul. And so Haman is is is directly related to Amalek. He is is this a consensus position within Jewish scripture that he is an Amalekite, so he's he's a member of this of this uh of this people that the the Jews are commanded to fight and to and to really to to annihilate uh insofar as they can. So we have we have this we have we have this uh um this biblical uh genealogical connection between the people of Abraham and the story of Abraham, and the story of you know of Mordecai, Esther, and Haman, which is so many years later.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Aaron Powell That's important, right? Because the story of Esther happens a solid 1500 years after when Abraham is supposed to have lived. But um Amalek is also sort of a vague idea of just the enemy of the Israelites in the Bible. And even to this day, it's used by politicians and used in in all kinds of scriptures and writing. Uh and yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

It's been used, it's been used often in in the Gaza War, like in the in in the war in Gaza, beginning really the first few days after uh after October 7th, there is there was this uh um kind of rash uh epidemic of uh of uh Amalek speak among Israeli politicians from Ninyao himself all the way to uh supposedly liberal politicians who declared uh Hamas to be Amalek and you know uh by extension of course the the entire Palestinian uh population of Gaza to be again uh uh if if if if if you're if you're if you're uh if you're describing a collectivity in Amalek in Jewish as Amalek in Jewish religious terms, that means that they yeah, they're not just enemies, but they they all need to be annihilated.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

They need to be annihilated. Okay. And then the point is this vague idea of Amalek, which you've explained, uh, is clearly associated with Haman, who we're gonna go deeper into who's the character the central antagonist in the book of Esther, because he's clearly connected to Amalek. So he's he's an Amalekite. So you did it. You got us from Abraham to Hamas. Very superficially, I was gonna say. That's okay. We got there. And um now let's tell the the Purim story.

unknown 7:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

We don't have to do it all the way in great detail, but I think we have to do it in order to level set so that everybody can follow the rest of the points.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

First of all, we should encourage uh listeners to read the book of Esther. It's very short, it's very uh dramatic. Uh go ahead and and and and blow the dust off your Bibles and read it.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

It happens in, like you said, ancient Persia, supposed to have happened in ancient Persia. There's a king named Ahashferosh, who is supposed to be maybe Xerxes, but there's no actual connection there. Uh and like you said, it happens in a much different setting than the Abraham story we've been talking about with a bunch of sheep farmers in Iraq somewhere. This is like opulent Persian palaces with cushions and white horses and fancy cottons and uh um big feasts and and that kind of scenery. Yeah. Um and then what happens?

SPEAKER_02 8:12

So the story starts, interestingly enough, with the king Haswarez having a gigantic feast, an opulent feast, as you mentioned. He is the king of this mythological mythically uh gigantic empire that stretches from India to Ethiopia. Um and he gets into this into his head to to have his his wife exhibit herself to the guests at his feast, right? Wife is named Vashti, and Vashti famously says no. She refuses to exhibit herself to become this sort of uh uh uh showpiece for him. Uh the king gets furious. He decides that um interestingly, but if if if this is allowed to pass, then women throughout the kingdom and all the nationalities of the kingdom are going to rebel against their husbands, and therefore Vashti needs to be made an example of, and he basically gets rid of her. It's not clear exactly how he gets rid of her, whether she whether she's killed or just uh walled up somewhere, but she's no longer his wife, which means that the slot opens up, right? And and then he uh holds a competition to see uh who's who's going to be the his next wife as this sort of playboy can yeah, like a casting show. Exactly. Um yeah, the sleazy connotations are all in the book. We're not we're not uh we're not we're not putting them there ourselves. He decides to have a competition, um, you know, to as this kind of superficial playboy type, what he's really interested in in is beauty, right? And uh one of the contestants is uh named Esther or Hadassah, she's uh most more most more commonly known as Esther, uh, who is a Jew. And she is encouraged to participate in this competition by uh Mordecai, who is either her cousin, her uncle, or her husband, depending, depending on uh uh on who you ask. So we have cousins, right? We have cousins in here as well. He he tells her, go ahead and and and and participate in the show, but conceal your Jewishness. It's an important part of the important element of this.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Right. He tells her not to say that she's Jewish.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

Right. Mordecai, uh, he hangs out around the palace uh just to sort of see what happens. Esther, as we might uh guess, is selected to be a new queen and the wife of of King Hasuerus. While Mordecai is hanging out around the palace, he has an altercation with Haman. Now, Haman is the vizier, the prime minister, the the the main kind of advisor to the king, right? And he is, as we've already been told in Amalachite, he's the um he's he's a descendant of these people who are the genital enemies of the Jews.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Sorry. He's kind of a Stephen Miller character.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

Maybe more of a more anyway. He he he leaves that Whitkoff or uh or Kushner would be like the Mordecai. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

No. Anyway, where were we? So anyway, Haman is good leaves the palace one day in all his regalia. Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

And yeah, and his and his is very conceited and he wants everybody to bow down before him. And uh one day he encounters Mordecai outside the palace, and Mordecai does not bow down to him. The reason we don't know, actually. The reason is not given. But Mordecai decides, fuck this guy, I'm not bowing down to him. Which it of course incenses Haman greatly, and he decides to take it out on the entire Jewish people, right? Again, we're trying to speed the story along here. Um, he gets the king, the ear of the king. The the king says, sure, why the hell not? Let's uh let's destroy this entire people. And then uh Mordecai goes to Esther and says, Listen, you know, this is this may be the reason you you were chosen to be to be queen to save our people. So Esther, she fasts, she she sets up this feast, she reveals her identity to the king, and and and and asks him uh not only to to repeal the the this uh this commandment that has been made to destroy the Jewish people, but also importantly to overturn it. And what does it mean to overturn it? Not only that all the honors and respects that were given to Haman will go to Mordecai, who will now become the uh take his place, not only that Haman himself will be uh hanged, not only that all his ten children will be hanged, but also that Esther, Mordecai, and the Jews receive permission from the royal court to uh to take it out on all of their enemies. And all of their enemies, uh, we're told in the story are 75,000 people, including women and children, and a sort of uh mini-genocide takes place in the empire uh by the Jews with the sort of uh uh approval of the royal court. That's how the story ends.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

No one talks about the last three chapters.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Well, no one in your liberal synagogue talked about them, but other people talk about them and talk about them a lot. And for a lot of those people, that that's actually the point. So Eliot Horovitz, who wrote this wonderful book called Reckless Rights, that you know, I learned a lot about Purim Forum, actually traces how Purim and the Esther story throughout Jewish history have been used as a text that justifies and authorizes Jewish violence towards non-Jews. And interestingly, as he shows, one of the the main sort of uh target for this sort of animosity has often been Christians. So this is this is something that I think is is is important to take take into context when we're understanding how the Haman kind of legend has changed in in recent memory. Because as I think we've touched on uh you know in discussing the sort of triangle between Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the past, theologically speaking, Christianity is much more problematic for Jews than Islam, right? We have this with the uh the the Trinity, uh the worship of saints and and and the Virgin Mary, etc. Uh and the cross itself, of course, uh specifically had given given the fact that you know that it was a Jew that was crucified on it, and that you know, in many in many versions of the Christian legend of the crucifixion, it was the Jews who who had him crucified. This becomes kind of like a like a you know like a very concentrated symbol for a lot of a lot of things that make Jews anxious about Christianity. And we've mentioned also that Amalek is a descendant of Esau, right? And just as Ishmael is considered the the father of the of the Arabs and the Muslims in the Jewish tradition, so Esau is considered to be the father of the of the Westerners, the Europeans, the Christians, right? This is actually the Roman Empire, even before the Roman Empire becomes Christian, it is identified with Esau or with Idom, which was another name for him. And then Amalek is a descendant of Ida, right? So if you look at, for example, Maiman 90s, Rambam, the most important uh uh Jewish authority of the Middle Ages, he'll tell you not all Idom is Amalek. Amalek is one of the descendants of Idam, so not all Christians, not all Europeans are Amalek, but Amalek is definitely among the descendants. So he's there, he's lurking there within Christianity. And part of the Purim festivities in many Christian countries over the years has been to do this sort of um uh hanging and effigy of Haman. And this hanging and effigy has sometimes taken the form of something uh resembling or vaguely, even vaguely resembling a crucifixion, which was of course enough a lot of times to to set off various pogroms and Christian violence against Jews. I think this brings us to the the you know to the to this kind of carnivalesque character of the holiday, right? Of Purim. I think it's really, really important. Horovitz really uh stresses it and and and think he's quite right too. If we under if we understand holidays like carnival, and they and they exist in a lot of religions, the element of transformation and the reversal of hierarchies, of normal hierarchies is really, really important in them, right? So even within the Jewish community on Purim, you will have that something like often there'll be like the election of a Purim rabbi, right? It's one of the one of the kind of uh wildest kids in the yeshiva will be elected as the Purim rabbi, and he'll be uh sort of burlesquing and parodying the the the the the the higher the the normal hierarchy of the of the yeshiva for the for the for the duration of the holiday. Getting drunk is of course an important part of this of this holiday, even the Talmud says that you that you should get so so drunk that you cannot uh tell the difference between blessed be Mordecai and cursed be Hama, right? So there's a transformation right there. Within the story, one of the dramatic peaks of the of the of the of the Esther story is when the the destiny that was prepared for the Jews is prepared instead for Haman and his ilk. And the story says, and and and it was overturned in Afouchu. It's kind of the the climax. Yeah, the climactic phrase of the of the of the story. Bringing the trying to bring us back to to where we are today, right? To this holiday. Obviously, Haman has been identified with the enemies of the Jews for hundreds of years. Um during the Holocaust or in the in the run-up to the Holocaust, we know when the Jew when fascism was taking over Europe, the identification of Hitler with Haman was very, very common. And after the establishment of the state of Israel, um, after the rise of Zionism to become the sort of hegemonic ideology among among world Jewry in Israel, but also also in the US, also in Great Britain, you you come to see more and more this identification of the enemies of Israel as as Hamas. This also becomes you know very, very, very, very common. Uh you'll have you'll see American rabbis even talking about, not not necessarily even very right-wing ones, talking about Arafat and the PLO as Hamas, as uh as the latter-day incarnation of of the of these uh um mortal enemies of Jewry into the 19 into the 1980s and 1990s. And then of course in 1993 or 1994, I'm not sure, uh, you have the the Pura massacre in Hebron, right? So the Ibrahimi Mosque, which we have mentioned, that that that is the that is the the the uh the mosque that has been uh that has been established over the tombs of of the patriarchs of of Abraham and Sarah uh and their children. This is this is this is a uh a holy site that has been shared by by by Muslims and Jews for for hundreds of years, if not longer. 1994, of course, uh Hebron is under the control of the state of Israel. Uh Dr. Barak Olstein uh enters the mosque on Purim Day and massacres people at prayer. Uh I think 34 for 34 Palestinians are killed that day. And this is on Purim. This guy becomes a hero to many of the extreme right settlers who are now running Israel, people like Ben Gvir, they're they're very much of the same Iliu, people that we've mentioned before. I think if we if we if we if we're trying to think about how how things are looking today and what the with the what role this the story is playing for for people like Netanyahu, then there's the these are these are some of the through lines.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah, we hear a lot about Khamani calling Israel the great snake, but there's also that he's the great Haman to the Israelis. Um so so can we talk more about like Jews and Persians and Iran? And so should we talk about like Cyrus and why people call Trump Cyrus? Do you want to start there?

SPEAKER_02 18:05

Yeah, so actually, I mean, look, the enemy in the book of Esther is not the Persians, right? The the enemy is is Hama. And the sort of sect or party or you know group within the Persian Empire that uh is anti-Jewish, whether it's because there are Malachites or whether it's because Mordecai pissed Haman off, or whether there's some other reason we don't really know, right? But they don't like the Jews and the Jews don't like them. This does take place under the sort of overarching framework of an empire which is not actually inherently either pro or anti-Jewish. And this might already sound familiar if you're thinking about uh today's today's world. You know, here here the here the here the big empire is is is Persia. And as you mentioned uh several generations earlier, we have a historic event which is also reflected in the Bible, a very important uh event, which is when King Cyrus takes the throne and um and and uh and takes over from the Babylonian Empire, which is exiled the Jews from Judea. Um he lets them go back. He issues a commandment that says the the the Jews who have been in exile in Babylonia can can go back. Uh they can refound a national home, if we want to call it that. Not an independent state, but a national home under the aegis of the empire in Judea, where they were from. This is celebrated. You know, Cyrus is called in Hebrew, is he's considered a servant of God. He's considered a very, very, very sort of important personage, even though he's not necessarily a very moral, uh morally upright man in his own right. He was selected by God in order to do this uh this service for the people of Israel. And yeah, during Trump won, especially around the time when when Trump decided to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which as we've discussed in the past was you know one of the triggers for the Great March of Return and a real uh Palestinian rebellion. This was hailed by religious Jews, by religious Zionists, as a sort of messianic kind of occurrence. And and and Trump was was likened to Cyrus. Right? So there's this identification between the important global empire of the time, whether that's Persia then or the US today, and their king doing the the the work of God, even though he's not necessarily a very, a very uh a very wise or a very moral character. And this is the same with the Hasawares, right? The Hasawaris is not presented as being a particularly uh likable guy, he's not presented as as being particularly moral. Uh he's basically being manipulated the whole the whole time, whether it's by Haman or whether it's by Mordecai and Esther. So again, we can see parallels to Trump, of course. But if we're talking about Iran and the way that Iranist is thought about, you know, within the kind of Israeli uh Zionists uh and and and and earlier Jewish imaginaries, there's also a very strong ambivalence there. Because Iran, Persia, generally speaking, one of the empires that Jews lived uh under pretty pretty well. In fact, when the uh when the Persians conquered Jerusalem in 614, apparently the Jews of the city took their side and and also used used used the opportunity to to avenge themselves on the Christians in the city. So there's definitely a sort of a Persian-Jewish alliance that you can that you can look on historically. And of course, Iran, up until the 1979 revolution, under the Shah, was one of Israel's best friends. It was a there was a very, very, very close alliance between the between these two these two states. And and and and to this day, even you if you if you see the rhetoric that people like like Netanyahu as well as Trump, especially Netanyahu is using, you know, they'll always say the war is not against the Iranian people, right? We love the Iranian people, the Iranians and the Jews have a long history together. Uh, the war is against the regime. And of course, the regime is unpopular. We know that the regime in Iran is a dictatorial one, and a lot of people in Iran oppose it. But from an Israeli or Zionist point of view, it's very easy. I think it's very easy to say, you know, okay, we you know, our war is not against the Iranians, but against this kind of Amalekite minority which is which has integrated itself in or seamlessly within the Iranian people, and then you can have this conflation, as we've already seen happen many, many, many times. You make a conflation between a religious group on the one hand, a political group on the one hand, and a family group on the one hand, right? So a Malek is considered to be the sort of genealogical category, right? There's a people who are descended from a particular person who lived 3,000 years ago. Now, there's off, of course, also a sort of moral element. here right and and and and if we if you want to look at other readings you know readings who are that are more uh sympathetic or maybe more you know more progressive of of the story amalek is kind of a hard one right it's a it's a hard part of the hard part of the story as is the book of Esther right to sort of assimilate into a into a progressive or humanistic worldview but there have been people who have been trying to do that and for example one way that you can do it is you can point to the way that Amalek is presented in the story as being people who have no respect for the roles of war people who have no respect for you know the sanctity of the lives of women women children and old people who are uh who are who are who are who are cowardly and who are unafraid also to use sexual violence and warfare right and these are things that you can say the the the late uh Israeli playwright for example Anatgov uh uh in the 1990s uh was arguing explicitly with people in Israel who were saying that the Arabs were Amalek and she was saying no the Arabs are not Amalek Amalek is a is a is a moral category for people who have you know no respect for basic moral principles who who who will target women children and old people and you know in this in this respect you know there's a um I think it's very telling that the one of you know one of the first things that happened during this war and we still don't know if it was the US or Israel who did it apparently it was the US uh was this bomb that fell on a school and killed 200 school children. Right? That's how that's how that's that's how this war started maybe 150 I don't know I don't think we have exact numbers. But um you know so there are the there's always other ways of reading these stories. I think it's really important to understand and it's really important to to think also about the the sort of carnivalesque aspect of the story. Okay. I mean in the Middle Ages when people in Europe including Jews were using these carnival like holidays whether it was actual carnival or poor these people who had a lot a lot to be angry about there's a lot of things throughout the year that you know that were kind of built building up uh within people the feelings of oppression feeling of being feel feelings of being put down and uh and kind of repressed by by by the hierarchies that they were living under. Whether you're a peasant who's living under the hierarchy of the of the church and the monarchy and the and the nobility or whether you're a Jew who's living under the who's living under the oppression of the of the of the Christian majority that's around you when there are uh opportunities to you know to to to overturn that and even even temporarily to do things that are that are normally not allowed that'll come out and it'll come out in often very sort of uh violent ways right there's no there's no two ways around that we can see that historically happening whether we like it or not. And I think that's part of the that's part of the that's part of the story. That's part of this of this kind of uh a very ambivalent and very uh troubling energy that it that appears at these moments.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

A kind of chaotic violence.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

Yeah there's a kind of chaotic violence also that's that's that I think is is is very inherent in this war to take it back from from anything progressive to to to how destructive anything things are things are looking at the moment like you know it's it's been very very uh commonly noted that there doesn't appear to be any actual strategic purpose to this war. Like Trump does not know what he's doing. There is a uh especially if you look at what people like Hexerth are saying there's a there's a pleasure there's a sort of sadistic pleasure that's taken into sort of like you know kicking the beehive and just making you know just making mayhem and and and this is what the this is what the the region and possibly the the entire world is is descending into is this kind of a destructive doesn't seem to be building anything up. So you know if you want to take a religious point of view and I think you know I think sometimes we need to there's a chance or at least there's a hope that out of something you know so chaotic and so destructive and so uh uh so mind blowing uh something utterly new will have to arise right and this is the sort of messianic hope that's embodied in in holidays like poor him and that I think you know it's natural or it it it in some ways I think it's it's it's uh if we want to have any sort of hope in this sort of historical situation, we have to embrace the the possibility that something entirely unforeseen will will emerge from from from this chaos and from all this evil that we're seeing around us.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Aaron Ross Powell And of course not to revel in the destructiveness ourselves.

unknown 25:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

We can recommend that book that Elliot Horowitz book Rise of Reckless Rights and I hope that people who've grown up with the Purim story that maybe are listening to this like I have I don't know maybe read it in a different slightly different way. And um if Netanyahu can use it to justify or to sort of connect and drum up support for a deadly campaign, maybe there's a way that we can all find a way to use it like you said, Matan to to capture some kind of hope. I do think that the feminine feminist readings of of Purim are a good place to start where Vashti you know denies the king, where Esther uh denies Haman and the king um and maybe maybe the way out of this is uh women I have to save us.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

It really ties back to what we're talking about with Ghan in that episode, right? About Sarah. Yeah. Because Esther can be taken as a sort of uh kind of like a mean bitch heroin in the same way that Sarah that Sarah was. And she has it, right? Like the there's talk about Project Esther. You know what Project Esther is? It's this uh this kind of like McCarthyite project of of that the the Jewish uh Zionist right is trying to underkit undertake in American academia so they definitely see Esther as one of theirs. And you know there's there's a there's a current even you know among liberals or even among leftists to sort of uh uh wash their hands of this entire story and say okay the maybe we need to even abolish Purim or you know the Megillah is like it's not really it's not really very Jewish it's uh it's it's too violent and it's too uh it's too mean spirited you know for loot for Martin Luther it was the opposite Martin Luther thought the that that the book of Esther was the most Jewish book of the of the of the Old Testament and he did not mean that as a compliment right um famously the book the God is never never mentioned in this book right all right anyway the point is I I don't think abolishing this sort of thing just like you know uh trying to step away from it and say oh that's not our Judaism this is you know this is like a sort of atavistic uh whatever is and and and and Esther and Mordecai are like you know they're actually kind of sinister characters I don't think it's I don't think that's the right way of reading it. I think you know uh Esther and Mordecai they both I mean Mordecai nobody really understands why he refuses to to bow to Heyman there's like there's there's a lot of discussion about this in the you know rabbinical literature what it what is it exactly that he was that he was refusing to do right and it was and it's clear it's clear everybody is was in the discussion that is that he's putting not only himself but but his entire people in a lot of in in a lot of danger by doing that is that a responsible thing to do right he does that on the other on the one hand. On the other hand Esther is told to deny her Jewishness right Esther becomes the sort of Murana right I mean she becomes a a crypto Jew uh in the palace until until the moment where she went where where where she reveals herself so what is that about why is that why why is that the right thing to do it's not entirely clear either. There's there is this this uh my favorite moment of the book when Mordec goes up to Esther and she's sort of you know very troubled by the situation and he says who knows if it was just if if if it was not for this moment that you were selected to become and although God is now mentioned in the in the book there's this sort of like implicit mention here that there was a there's a there's a there's a logic behind things right and even you know I think even people who are very flawed even people who are uh mixed up and complicit in in various forms of power in various ways they have the opportunity sometimes to to do to do the right thing um to you know to make to make a real impact and and Nestra definitely does that you know maybe she has so much pent up rage maybe she has so much you know um uh so much humiliation and and and and and and and degradation that she's had to you know had to swallow and had to suffer through maybe that's what makes her so angry that she then she she then after doing the right thing she becomes genocidal right after taking care of her people she decides to go on the war path and and and and become vengeful. So I'm not you know I don't think I don't think Esther is a is a role model necessarily but she's certainly a very interesting character. This is a very interesting book and I wouldn't want to I I wouldn't want to push it out of the Jewish bookshelf.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

No we should avoid any of the good Jew bad Jew kind of stuff and also um there's other parts of Esther when she fasts and bathes and prepares herself uh for multiple days that has been connected to a kind of zen or a kind of um prepar a kind of spiritual preparation for a life or death moment where she's either going to suffer the same fate as Vashti by the king or get her wish. She's allowed to touch the scepter in a kind of horny way like you like you texted me the other day. But yeah, we should wrap up. I think we've done it. I think we've shown how how deep this can go. And what I also really like is we've we've we've practiced sort of applying your frame your framework. You know in the live event last year people asked you know what's the point of using this kind of applying these analyses of myths and and and religious uh texts to contemporary geopolitics yeah and and um uh I think this is a good example of uh once again we see that it's being used and our responsibility to kind of parse it and if we don't provide some kind of other side to it or or some kind of analysis and understanding of it why should this war be taking place with the kind of tacit support of anybody who's ever been to poor yeah again yeah I totally agree.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

We didn't start it and we wouldn't be making this bonus episode if BB hadn't you know made that speech I think we need we our listeners need to understand what their enemies if we want to use that language are talking about right and what ideological tools they're they're they're wielding whether we want to try to wield uh you know those those same ideological tools in the same in the other direction or not and that's uh that's up to everybody who's listening you know I'm not I'm not saying this is necessarily uh you know a something that everybody needs to take up for themselves but it's important to understand the stories and the and the sort of work that they're doing right it's like you know you could be Esther you could be Mordechai or you could be Haman's horse.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

What does Aman's horse do? I forget that part I think it's given to Mordecai. Oh okay what does that mean? Haman took the king's robe put it on Mordechai yeah put him on his own horse and saying and then he he he he uh yeah he he parades him through the city before he's he's hanged yeah indeed all right um Matan thank you so much again for for the for the connections and the depth and the research and uh we are preparing a bibliography of sources for people that have been asking for this for months so stay tuned we'll put that on the website in the meantime um we'll be back in a couple weeks with the proper episode six of Bad Cousins the finale thanks so much bye