Megillat Esther is a lot like a soap opera. It’s full of beauty pageants, banquets, assassination plans and villains. There’s a theme of topsy-turviness. Haman is hanged on the very gallows that he built for Mordechai. Instead of being killed, the Jews of Persia flourish, and we live happily ever afterwards. But there’s one part of the turn-about that we don’t typically act out in our Purim play. In chapter 9 the Jews kill 75,000 Persians.
Context: Although Haman has been defeated, King Hassan issued a royal decree stating that Persians could kill Jews as they pleased on the 13th day of Adar. In this story, he was powerless to change the decree. Mordechai suggests, “Why don’t you issue a new decree giving us the right to defend ourselves?” The king does that, and the Jews do… that. Every year, I wish that this part of the story weren’t there.
I’m not alone in that. Those who hold the full readings of megillah rush through these verses. They sing them. Eikha trope, the melancholy musical mode used at Tisha b’Av when we mourn the fallen Temples and the brokenness of creation. The folks from The…
