Sunday, March 24, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
NPR writes about Purim, and makes it sound like Chapter 9 where the Jews defend themselves from the enemies that have been planning to eradicate them is a bloodthirsty revenge fantasy that Israelis are now following:
After Haman's plot is foiled, the Jews are actually still in danger — because the king's decree to kill the Jews has gone out, and can't be repealed. So instead, they arm the Jews to let them fight back.And they do. And they kill 75,000 people across the empire.
"It's really only in modern times that people sort of refocus attention on it. And say like, wait a second — this is actually kind of bloodthirsty, and a little bit over the top," says Koller.And, he says, for good reason."You take 2,000 years of fantasy violence and marry it to a real world in which people actually have machine guns, and suddenly it gets really dark."Haman is considered to be a descendant of Amalek, the tribe that attacked the Israelites in the desert. And there's a commandment that's read on the Shabbat before Purim to eradicate Amalek and every generation. Rabbi Jill Jacobs heads T'ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.Jacobs notes there are sadly those in recent eras who have taken this not as satire or metaphor, but literally.Professor Aaron Koller points to Nazis like Julius Streicher who read Chapter 9 as evidence that the Jews were bloodthirsty, and should be eradicated before they attacked. And thirty years ago Baruch Goldstein, an extremist Israeli settler, murdered Muslim worshippers in Hebron — an attack carried out intentionally on Purim."And it's also more recently been invoked by Prime Minister Netanyahu also as a justification for killing Palestinians," says Jacobs.
This is so incorrect on so many levels.
The Sabbath before Purim is meant to remember the evil that Amalek attempted, not to eradicate them. Netanyahu mentioned Amalek specifically in the context of memory, not of destruction.
But a careful reading of the megillah shows that the Jews only killed those who were organized to kill them. It was supreme self defense.
Chapter 8 says "The king has permitted the Jews of every city to assemble and fight for their lives; if any people or province attacks them, they may destroy, massacre, and exterminate its armed force together with women and children, and plunder their possessions."
The decree was only in the context of self-defense, only against anyone who attacks the Jews.
But what about the allowances of killing their women and children and to take their possessions?
That never happened. Chapter 9 makes it clear that the only people killed were men who were preparing a genocide against Jews, and no possessions were taken.
And so, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month—that is, the month of Adar—when the king’s command and decree were to be executed, the very day on which the enemies of the Jews had expected to get them in their power, the opposite happened, and the Jews got their enemies in their power.Throughout the provinces of King Ahasuerus, the Jews mustered in their cities to attack those who sought their hurt....So the Jews struck at their enemies with the sword, slaying and destroying; they wreaked their will upon those who hated them.In the fortress Shushan the Jews killed a total of five hundred men. ...They also killed... the ten sons of Haman son of Hammedatha....The rest of the Jews, those in the king’s provinces, likewise mustered and fought for their lives. They disposed of their enemies, killing seventy-five thousand of their foes; but they did not lay hands on the spoil.
There is not even a hint that the Jews killed women or children, and they explicitly did not take any spoils of war.
The megillah says that many of the Jews' enemies were afraid of the Jews because of the decree, so apparently many of them desisted from their original plan to destroy the Jews - and they were evidently spared.
In fact, Jewish legend says that Haman had at least one daughter (who dumped garbage on Haman's head as he led Mordechai on horseback) and we know he had an evil wife, but no one I'm aware of says they were killed. (One midrash says that Haman's wife became Esther's servant. )
This is not a revenge fantasy. This is not bloodlust. This is a teaching about self-defense. The Jews only attacked those who were preparing to attack them and it was a fight "for their lives."
I don't know why the Jews who were interviewed made this sound like it was immoral. The lesson is that Jews should be allowed to defend themselves from genocidal antisemites.
And that applies today as well.
(h/t Irene)
