{"id":836,"date":"2014-03-12T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/03\/christians-have-fallen-in-love-with-queen-esther-purims-jewish-heroine.html"},"modified":"2014-03-12T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T20:00:00","slug":"christians-have-fallen-in-love-with-queen-esther-purims-jewish-heroine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/03\/christians-have-fallen-in-love-with-queen-esther-purims-jewish-heroine.html","title":{"rendered":"Christians Have Fallen in Love With Queen Esther, Purim\u2019s Jewish Heroine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
In\u00a0Hadassah: One Night With the King<\/em><\/a>, a popular 2004 novelization of the Book of Esther, the queen describes her first night alone with the king of Persia. Apparently she had a great time:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\u2026 our mutual hunger raged unchecked\u2014at no time did I even think of demurring or becoming submissive, for my desire for him was genuine. I had fallen in love with him. I had seen past his outer facade \u2026 and now I had reached his heart.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
This isn\u2019t the same meek, pure Esther most Jews are familiar with from the story of Purim, the woman Jewish girls throughout history have wanted to emulate. This Esther is a bundle of raging hormones, swept away by the handsome and powerful Xerxes (or as Jews know him, Ahasuerus).<\/span><\/div>\n
But the Esther in this novel is different from the heroine we\u2019re familiar with in another significant way. Later inHadassah<\/em>, Esther is depicted on her walk toward Xerxes to request a private banquet with the king and Haman. She teeters between life and death, as anyone who approached the king unbidden risked being put to death immediately. The original telling of this moment in the Bible portrays both Esther\u2019s fortitude and her resignation to her fate: \u201cIf I perish, I perish,\u201d she famously says. But in this novel, Esther seems to embrace her possible death:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
[I]t was not until then that I remembered it all again. That the King of Kings was my father, that he missed me and longed for my presence as dearly as my own father had\u2014and as urgently as I had come to crave the presence of Xerxes. And just as I had come to anticipate those times of fellowship with Mordecai and [Hathach]\u2014simply basking in the warm glow of their nearness\u2014G-d looked forward to my being with Him.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Suddenly, this most Jewish of all heroines is anticipating her death and looking forward to the day she is reunited with her God. The woman Jewish girls have revered since the days of the first Purim carnival suddenly seems so \u2026 Christian.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0Hadassah: One Night With the King, a popular 2004 novelization of the Book of Esther, the queen describes her first night alone with the king of Persia. Apparently she had a great time: \u2026 our mutual hunger raged unchecked\u2014at no time did I even think of demurring or becoming submissive, for my desire for him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nChristians Have Fallen in Love With Queen Esther, Purim\u2019s Jewish Heroine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In Hadassah: One Night With the King, a popular 2004 novelization of the Book of Esther, the queen describes her first night alone with the king of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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