This week, leading up to the holiday of Purim, has been an awful one for anyone who cares about Israel and the Jewish people and the Image of G-d, tarnished and violated as it is. Violence in Israel is spinning out of control.
On Sunday, two brothers, Hallel and Yagel Yaniv from the Israeli settlement of Har Bracha were murdered by Palestinian terrorists.
On Monday, another terrorist murdered Elan Ganeles, a 26 year-old Jewish man from Connecticut, in the Jordan Valley on his way to a wedding near Jerusalem.
“The measure of our integrity will be how forcefully, how clearly, we speak out against these forces. To make clear that the filthy ilk of Smotrich and Ben Gvir will not be the defining voices of Judaism and Zionism.”
We mourn them without equivocation. We are pained as part of the interconnected body of the Jewish people, and we insist that their killers be brought to justice.
And then there is Huwara.
After the murders of the Yanivs, scores of radical armed settlers stormed through the Palestinian town of Huwara, rampaging through its neighborhoods throughout the night, burning houses and stores and cars, and leaving at least one man dead.
Even some Israeli military leaders are calling the settler rampage a “pogrom.” And it’s not hyperbole. After all, “pogrom” is the term that was created to describe mob violence against the Jews of Europe with the backing of official institutions like the Church, the government, and the press. Huwara would seem to be the first Jewish-perpetrated pogrom in history, as far as I know. The most radical elements in the government coalition have been seeding settler vioence for a long time—and have spent the past few days since the riot nodding at the perpetrators. That should make every one of us shudder with nausea and disgust.
After all, perhaps the biggest disgrace is how all this was so predictable. For weeks, it has seemed like Israel is coming apart at the seams, as the most extreme and vicious coalition in its 75-year history gives its blessing to hate. The hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have been pouring into the streets to demonstrate, week after week, show that this government is beyond the pale in it extremism for a huge swatch of this democratic society.
The despicable Bezalel Smotrich—a Kahanist, a racist, and also the Finance Minister who shares responsibility for civilian affairs in the West Bank—says, “Huwara needs to be wiped out.”
The vile Itamar Ben Gvir—another former leader of Kahane’s movement, the man whom Netanyahu saw fit to make National Security Minister with authority over the police in the West Bank—“likes” a tweet from a settler leader saying “Huwara should be erased today.” Ben Gvir is sponsoring a bill calling for the death penalty for Palestinian terrorists, while as of this writing no Israeli terrorists have been arrested for the Huwara violence.
And Prime Minister Netanyahu—who raised these men and others to positions of authority; a disgraced leader who has demonstrated beyond any shadow of doubt to have not a shred of decency or integrity—has the audacity to compare hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Israel’s streets to the pogromists in Huwara!
(By the way, as of this writing, Smotrich is still the invited guest of American supporters of Israel Bonds in Washington, DC next week. It is imperative that American Jews make clear: Smotrich is persona non grata; he is not welcome in our communities; he must be denied a U.S. visa. He is a disgrace to everything the Jewish community stands for; a true Hillul Hashem.)
It may feel like Israeli society is imploding. I happen to think Israeli democracy is resilient—but not automatically so. For far too long, Israelis and the American Jewish community have been complacent about the poisonous weed of hate that has sprouted in the Israeli far-right. Now that it has moved to the mainstream, given authority and power by a corrupt and desperate Prime Minister. Will we continue to make excuses for it?
Democracy is a muscle that needs to be exercised or it will atrophy. I, for one, see a battle before us for the soul of the Jewish state. It is of desperate importance that anyone who cares about the Jewish future realize their stake in this, and that we do everything we can to support those hundreds-of-thousands-strong protesters for democracy and decency.
What might we learn from this week’s horrors—and how can we celebrate Purim on Monday night in the shadow of Huwara?
Let’s talk about the Megillat Esther.
Esther, it must be recognized, is a comic Jewish revenge fantasy. It’s not historical; it’s a rich and quite marvelous satire, that takes in lots of targets.
We need to understand the comic dimension of Esther in order to grasp the violent denouement that takes place the end of the book:
For Mordecai was now powerful in the royal palace, and his fame was spreading through all the provinces; the man Mordecai was growing ever more powerful. So the Jews struck at their enemies with the sword, slaying and destroying; they wreaked their will upon their enemies. (Esther 9:4-5)
…
The rest of the Jews, those in the king’s provinces, likewise mustered and fought for their lives. They disposed of their enemies, killing seventy-five thousand of their foes; but they did not lay hands on the spoil That was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar; and they rested on the fourteenth day and made it a day of feasting and merrymaking. (Esther 9:16-17)
In Esther, Jews who have been terrorized and threatened with mass destruction suddenly find themselves in a position to control their own destinies, with the precious ability to defend themselves against those who would destroy them. And then they massacre their enemies.
Did Esther anticipate Huwara?
We should note that violence—exaggerated, cartoonish violence—is an audience-pleaser. Consider, for example, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. It, too, is a revenge fantasy about a group of American-Jewish soldiers out to wreak revenge against every Nazi they can find in WW2-era Europe. The violence is grotesque, over-the-top, cathartic: at the end, Hitler and Goebbels and the entire Nazi senior staff are memorably executed by the “Basterds” en masse. Whether or not you find this entertaining (I must admit, I do) depends entirely on your sensibilities and your tolerance for fantasy violence.
To understand Esther, you have to understand the genre in which it is written. Esther is operating in this sort of mode. Did the Jews historically—in the name of self-defense and retribution against their genocidal enemies—slaughter 75,000 Persians? Of course not. It’s the projection of a community who heretofore has been oppressed.
And too many people don’t get what the Megillah is trying to teach with its outrageousness.
The theme that permeates Esther is inversion—events turn out to be 180 degrees from what they are expected or supposed to be. “…The very day on which the enemies of the Jews had expected to get them in their power, the opposite happened, and the Jews got their enemies in their power” (9:1).
But it’s not just the inversion of events that happens in Esther. There’s also an inversion of people: And many of the people of the land professed to be Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them (8:17). Can you imagine?! Those Persians were so scared of the Jews that they even pretended to be Jewish!
And perhaps that’s what’s behind the violent retribution of the Jews in Chapter 9 of the Megillah. When the Jewish defense squads of Shushan go wild and kill tens of thousands—is it so farfetched to say that this is the greatest inversion of all? Their enemies act like Jews, and the Jews act like their enemies!
And here’s where I’m going to stop laughing this year.
Because, as we know, humor is often a tool that reveals deeply hidden truths. “If you want to understand a society,” said Rebbe Nachman in one of his greatest stories, “you have to understand its humor.” Humor exposes things that a community strives to keep under wraps.
The Megillah predicted that Jews are just as capable as anyone of behaving monstrously. Huwara proves this to be so. In Huwara, we saw that Jews are just as capable as anyone of behaving monstrously, just as Esther predicted. Is there anyone left who believes that Jews, once in power, are immune from committing horrible acts? Everyone is capable of atrocities, and just because, on the historical balance sheet, Jews have usually been the victims, that is no reason to believe Jews can’t commit horrors. Huwara proves that, Q.E.D.
The measure of our integrity will be how forcefully, how clearly, we speak out against these forces. To make clear that the filthy ilk of Smotrich and Ben Gvir and the rioters crying for blood will not be the defining voices of Judaism and Zionism. Every one of us has to say yesh gvul (there is a limit to what we will allow in our names), and we must be the voice of democracy, decency, and justice—as envisioned by our Torah and by the founders of the State of Israel.
On Monday night, I’ll be with my community and we’ll read Esther again. We’ll boo and drown out the name of Haman; we’ll celebrate Esther’s bravery. We’ll drink a few L’chayims. But I’ll be reflecting on how Purim is ultimately about inversion and disguises—and how those Purim costumes have a powerful way of revealing deep truths about what lies behind the mask of seemingly civilized people.