A Purim Tale: Esther and the Ethics of Consent

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“As I get older, Esther, for me, continuously changes… In many ways, she is a fascinating example of making lemonades out of lemons, with a lot of different layers to that.”

— Nechama Goldman Barash

Purim may be a joyful time of feasting, imbibing, and gift-giving, but the history behind the holiday as told in the Book of Esther deserves closer examination.

Known as the Festival of Lots, Purim commemorates the foiling of a genocidal plot against the Jewish people, orchestrated by Haman, the royal vizier to King Achashverosh. It celebrates the story of a strong and determined woman, one who appears unsummoned before the King in order to save her people, although it is forbidden and punishable by death. When Achashverosh’s new wife, an orphan named Esther, reveals her Jewishness to her husband just before the date set for the annihilation, he has the vizier executed as punishment. Unable to reverse his own decree authorizing the slaughter, he grants the Jewish people permission to defend themselves and they ably defeat their would-be killers.

Each year, we celebrate this victory and the bold initiative of Esther herself… yet many unsavory aspects of this tale are glossed over or softened in Jewish education, including sex trafficking, kidnapping, rape, and patriarchal exploitation.

This is an inarguably dark text for women, despite its celebrated ending.

This episode of Living Jewishly is an instalment of What Would You Do?, a podcast about ethics in the modern world. In this episode, Dr. Elliot Malamet speaks with Nechama Goldman Barash, who teaches contemporary halakha and Talmud at Matan and the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and is a qualified sex educator, about consent, agency, sexualization, and coercion in the story of Esther… and beyond.

“How should we think about Megillat Esther in the age of #MeToo?”

— Dr. Elliot Malamet

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