Purim in the 21 century

The Esther Scroll is, in a sense, the most relevant biblical book today.
It is about assimilated Jews and written for them.
The Greek version of the Esther contains profuse prayers, but the Jewish
canonical version lacks any reference to God. It is as secular as Woody
Allen’s movies. Perhaps for that reason Esther is the only canonical book
absent from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Religious people simply were not interested in
secular romance.
The Esther was written for intelligent people. Judean peasants could believe
that Joshua parted the River Jordan and the flowing water kept forming a wall
into the skies; Rambam warned that these miracles were not to be taken
literally. Educated Babylonian Jews wouldn’t buy that. In the Esther, miracles
are of a different order: they represent improbable rather than physically
impossible events. To educated Jews, God performs miracles by adjusting
probabilities rather than by violating the laws of nature.
Mordechai Bilshan was a typical assimilated Jew, much like any ADL functionary
today. Just as Jews of today are called Paul, after our Christian nemesis, he
took the name of Marduk Bel Shunu, [god] Marduk Our Lord. Not unlike the modern
court Jews, Mordechai was extremely ill-mannered, as he refused to show basic
respect to viceroy. The entire Jewish community was endangered because of
Mordechai’s frankly unethical behavior; did you think, “Polish tax
farmers?”
Rabbis surmise that Mordechai behaved brutishly because he was certain of
eventual deliverance. Such a hypothesis does not square with the fact that
Mordechai rent his closes and was otherwise shocked upon hearing of Haman’s
reaction—extermination of all Jews.
Mordechai was a scheming Jew at that. Upon overhearing putschists, he quickly
ratted on them to the king. By doing so, Mordechai kept alive the very ruler who
would order the annihilation of all Jews. The narrator missed no opportunity to
hint to his readers that assimilated Jews are guilty, and deserving of their
fate.
Mordechai was only happy to introduce Esther, his cousin, to a pagan king for a
marriage which would likely have amounted to a one-time concubinage. Esther,
too, had no trouble understanding that she should keep her Jewishness from the
king. She abandoned Judaism in favor of pagan religious ceremonies.
At the time of the crisis, both assimilated personages changed. When Esther
initially refused to plead with the king for the Jews, Mordechai clearly hinted
to her that she could not expect that her own Jewishness would remain hidden
from the king. Pressed against the wall, Esther sprung into action, and with
much cunning and strong nerve overcame Haman, her husband’s favorite.
Esther was not your liberal Jew. After she managed to reverse the edict, Jews
were allowed to slaughter those who hated them. After five hundred alleged
anti-Semites were murdered in the capital, the shocked king turned to Esther to
ask if, perhaps, she wished for something else. Pretending not to understand
him, Esther answered that indeed, she had a wish—for one more day of killings.
So the Jews murdered another three hundred residents the next day.
Among other things, the Esther Scroll reminds American Jews to gather their
last shreds of Jewishness and support the expulsion of the Arabs as the least
criminal measure according to our religious precepts.

By

Obadiah Shoher.