Remembering Esther

This past week Jews celebrated the holiday of Purim. As you may know, this holiday derives from the strange biblical book of Esther. In this book a man named Haman plots to kill all the Jews.  Sadly, in our day, this does not surprise us.  It’s nothing new. The biblical stories relate how the Pharaoh tried to kill Jewish babies and in the New Testament Herod tries it as well.  In fact, there has not been a generation in the past two thousand years when someone was not trying to kill Jews.  How can we explain the tenacity of the killers and the tenaciousness of the survivors to keep on?


Why didn’t the Jewish people at one point say to God, “Listen, Master of the Universe, it is clear you don’t like us, other people don’t like us, wherever we go people hate us. Ok, we will quietly disappear into history.  And, good bye.”  But we didn’t do that, and I’m not sure why.


Maybe it’s because we remembered Esther.  We remembered Haman and the word “pur” which means lot.  Haman had concluded the Jews were different and a threat.  He cast lots to determine when he would order the murder of all Jews in the country.  As it turned out on that very day, Haman himself was hanged.  Because of the plotting and planning of Esther and Mordechai the mass murder of Jews did not happen in those days.  On Purim, we Jews remember this story because it happened then, and it happens now.


In the book of Esther there is no mention of God.  Some would say God was there and what happened was his will.  Maybe, I’m not so sure.  If the word God was omitted from an entire book, there must have been a reason.  Others assert, “Evil is from humans and must be fought by humans.”


If Jews have survived over the centuries it is because we have learned, “In memory lies redemption.”   If you remember and learn from what happened, you will not become lost.  We learned from Esther there will always be those who want to kill us.  We learned about the silence of God.  We learned to defend ourselves.  Maybe God is particularly present in the Jewish obsession with remembering.  Remembering Esther has indeed helped us survive.