In the Bible: Esther, a Jewish Queen - A Commitment to Beauty - The 92nd Street Y, New York

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The Elie Wiesel Living Archive

at The 92nd Street Y, New York Supported by The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity

In the Bible: Esther, a Jewish Queen - A Commitment to Beauty

Rejecting Vengence
Oct 29, 1981

Professor Wiesel’s foremost question is why God “chose not to give His name to the Book of Esther?” On the first level the story seems “marvelously simple,” an “awe-inspiring fairy tale which manages to reassure the child in each of us.” And this view “explains the universal popularity of Purim . . . that will last as long as exile, and longer.” But Professor Wiesel goes deeper, realizing that “in my time, the Jews of Shushan were not spared.” The Midrash sees each figure in the story as “more human and more profound.” But the vengeful ending points to why God refrains from being included therein:” to be Jewish, for God, and for the Jewish tradition, is to have all the reasons in the world to seek vengeance . . . but to choose not to.”

Selected Quotations:

Tonight, we shall tell tales--and nothing is more gratifying for a teller of tales than to bring people together: people from distant generations and contemporaries. (00:11:50)

-Elie Wiesel

I read [the Book of] Esther and felt reassured about Jewish history. (00:14:10)

-Elie Wiesel

After all, we Jews listen to our women. (00:22:26)

-Elie Wiesel

Study the text carefully and you will see that King Achashverosh is in fact a comparatively benevolent monarch with few prejudices. Civil rights had been granted to all the inhabitants, Jews included. (00:29:11)

-Elie Wiesel

Ambition and lust, vanity and treason, unquenchable thirst for power and fame on one hand, and total loyalty, faith, love, and beauty on the other. No wonder the Book has been such a success! (00:32:08)

-Elie Wiesel

After all, the Jews of Shushan are the real protagonists of this drama. It is their fate that is at stake. Their lives are in danger, their children are being singled out to be handed over to the executioner. (01:03:09)

-Elie Wiesel

A catastrophe was averted. A miracle occured: God did not accept a massacre of 22,000 Jewish children in Shushan. And that is why we celebrate Purim with such joy and fervor: to commemorate God’s pity for His children. There seems to be a limit even to His patience; even to His silence. (01:13:24)

-Elie Wiesel

One day a year, we imagine acts of violence--during Purim, when it’s but a game, a play--so as to impress upon us the important and vital lesson that it is prohibited all other days? (01:16:10)

-Elie Wiesel

Ultimately Purim is not so much a tale about persecution as it is a celebration of memory. (01:19:07)

-Elie Wiesel
Subthemes:
        1) Setting the Stage for Purim Players in the Book of Esther
2) Explaining the Universal Popularity of Purim
3) The Hidden Mysteries of the Purim Story
4) Celebrating 15 Years at 92Y
5) An Original Telling of the Purim Story
6) "Esther" in the White House (Politics in DC)
7) A Closer Look at Esther, Mordechai, and Achashverosh
8) The Villains: Haman (Anti-Semite) and Vashti (Feminist)
9) A Historical Lens
10) Midrash on the Purim Story
11) The Role of the Jewish Community
12) Haman’s jealousy of the Shushan Jews and his pact with Satan
13) Elijah and the Patriarchs: Saving 22,000 Children
14) Why God Remains Hidden Throughout the Story
15) Rejecting Vengeance

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