ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week we are celebrating Purim, and I have a special story for you. But first some background.
We have all heard the story of Purim: King Ahashuerus, partying with his friends and “merry with wine,” calls for Queen Vashti to display her beauty. Vashti refuses to obey her husband and is banished, never to be seen, or mentioned, again. The king then organizes a beauty pageant, ordering all virgins in his kingdom to appear. On her cousin Mordechai’s urging, Esther joins the contest and is selected as the new queen.
Esther’s cautious passivity contrasts with Vashti’s stubborn assertiveness. Throughout the story, she hides her Jewish identity from the King, but when the king’s evil advisor Haman hatches a plan to exterminate the Jews, she is urged by Mordechai to intervene and save the Jewish people.
When she finally gains the strength to speak out and protect her people, she is rewarded for her bravery; the king is furious with Haman at persecuting the people of his Queen and has him hanged, and Esther and Mordechai are hailed as heroes.
We never find out what happened to Vashti, but her banishment demonstrates that a powerful woman was seen as a potent threat in that patriarchal world. In fact, feminists throughout history have placed Vashti, not Esther, on a pedestal, lauding her as an ancient symbol of female empowerment. Harriet Beecher Stowe praised Vashti’s resistance as a “first stand for women’s rights,” and in The Woman’s Bible, first published in 1895, women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton described her as “a sublime representative of self-centered womanhood.” Both feminists lauded her as a paragon of dignity and self-respect, with Stowe writing that “we shall stand amazed that there was a woman found at the head of the Persian Empire that dared to disobey the command even of a drunken monarch.”
Modern feminism also celebrates Vashti as a model of rebellion against the patriarchy. Girls and women are encouraged to stand up for themselves, demand respect and refuse to be objectified. This is not disobedience; this is courage.
Sonia Zylberberg is a religionist who lives in Montreal and whose Masters thesis looked at Woman to Woman : Relationships in the Hebrew Bible and whose doctoral dissertation examined Transforming Rituals : Contemporary Jewish Women’s Seders. She has since retired from academia and turned to fiction. Besides the short story Vashti to the Rescue, she has written 3 Jewish-themed mystery novels: The Orange on the Seder plate, Too many latkes, and The Yarmulka in the Window. She now spends her time crocheting and singing, becoming fluent in Yiddish, and learning to draw.
“Vashti to the Rescue” was first published in Jewish Fiction, which is the only English-language journal, either in print or online, devoted exclusively to the publishing of Jewish fiction. Jewish Fiction’s interactive website allows readers to search its 600 stories by theme (such as Jewish holidays, Israel, Holocaust); by author; and by original language (Jewish Fiction has published stories either written in English or translated into English from 21 languages). You can subscribe to Jewish Fiction here.
WE HOPE YOU ENJOY THE STORY AND HAVE A VERY HAPPY PURIM!!!
