The Book of Esther, otherwise known as the megillah (“the scroll”) tells a great story of intrigue, courage, violence, and triumph. It centers on Esther herself, beautiful and brilliant, who finds herself trying to navigate in a society stacked against her, and in fact against all women.
Think about it. Boorish men making up stupid rules with which women are expected to comply. Men laying claim to controlling women’s behavior and women’s bodies, depriving them of integrity and dignity. Men with fragile egos propping themselves up by flouting their social dominance over women. A society that gives exaggerated credence to ostentatious displays of wealth, and where the supposed “pillars of society” are in fact vile men rotten to the core.
Does any of this sound familiar?
It should.
In the midst of all this, in the megillah you have a woman like Esther, using all her resourcefulness to overcome, one by one, the legal and social injustices to which she is subject. Part of the story is that Esther has to violate a cardinal rule that could get her killed. She has to visit the king uninvited, a crime punishable by death. As an expression of solidarity, she asks her fellow Jews to fast—a custom we follow to this very day. Hence Taanit Esther, the Fast of Esther, a sunrise to sunset fast the day before Purim (or on Thursday if Purim begins on Saturday night, as is the case this year).
Taanit Esther is not just an important ritual gesture to commemorate the heroism of Esther. It is also a reminder to us that the oppression of women in our society is an ongoing, and in some ways an accelerating, problem. The attempts to control women’s bodies involve laws so convoluted and grotesque that they would do the age of the megillah proud—having women bleed in parking lots before they are sufficiently in danger that they can legally be treated; demanding medically unnecessary but physically and emotionally invasive ultrasounds for women seeking an abortion; attempts to force girls age ten to bear the child of their rapist. In fact, these violations are probably even more oppressive than the megillah’s world, where simple subservience would probably have been enough. There are over five million acts of domestic violence a year, including more than a million rapes and physical assaults. Now, not then. Ancient Shushan was nothing like that.
And on top of the blatant attempts to control women’s bodies, we find an oppressive web of legislation, not unlike the king’s ruling that all women should respect their husbands (good luck with that!). Professions dominated by women are overworked and underpaid; sexual harassment in the workplace is still endemic; somewhere between 15 to 50 thousand women are trafficked each year.
Yes, indeed, we need to fast on Taanit Esther. And when we stomp out the name of Haman (may it be blotted out) and celebrate Esther’s victory on Purim, we should be given the hope that oppression can and will come to an end—for women, for our people, and for all people everyewhere.