How to navigate the Court of Trump? Esther’s pragmatism vs. Vashti’s principles
What the holiday tale of palace intrigue has to teach us about this fraught political moment
Vashti and Esther would have different approaches to navigating Trump’s U.S. — which would be best? Illustration by Forward Collage/Canva
Elliot Cosgrove March 12, 2025
For children, the Book of Esther is a fairy tale — of kings, queens, beauty contests and the foiled plans of a dastardly villain. The story can be read as proto-feminist, with Esther saving her people from within Persia’s patriarchy. The tale is also a theological meditation: The rare absence of God’s name in the text prompts us to consider the line between human agency and divine providence.
It is a story of palace intrigue and proximity to power, of strategy and survival — a tale that exposes the dangers of despotism, the ripple effects of a mercurial king’s impulsive decrees and the realpolitik of navigating an autocratic system.
And Esther is, above all, a manual for Jewish survival in exile, diaspora resilience, the fight against antisemitism, vulnerability and self-assertion — a Jewish blueprint for a post-Oct. 7 world. This year, that manual’s most important lessons may come from the contrasting models the female protagonists, Esther and her predecessor, Queen Vashti, represent when it comes to negotiating the delicate balance between principle and pragmatism as a leader.
Vashti presents our first model, in the book’s opening chapter. The king provides a feast for his ministers and courtiers, extravagant in its wealth, wine and wantonness. Vashti is summoned to present herself wearing her royal diadem. The reasons for her refusal to appear are never made explicit, but we are left to think that acceding to it would compromise her moral core or legitimize a debased court.
Vashti’s stand comes at a steep price. She keeps her integrity but loses her crown. The suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, writing in The Woman’s Bible, which was published in 1895, said that Vashti rose “to the heights of self-consciousness and self-respect,” taking “her soul into her own keeping, and though her position as wife and as queen are jeopardized, she is true to her Divine aspirations of her nature.”
If Vashti’s exit from the royal court came through her refusal to reveal, Esther’s entrance comes through her willingness to conceal. In fact, her very name — Esther — derives from the Hebrew root meaning “to hide.” She suppresses her Jewish identity to become queen.
Ancient and modern commentators alike wrestle with Esther’s moral compromises: hiding her Jewishness, marrying a non-Jewish king and complying with the very patriarchy Vashti defied. But had she not compromised, she would not have been in a position to defend her people against Haman’s evil decree.
Esther’s heroism came because, in contrast to Vashti, she was willing to work within a corrupt system, so that when it mattered most, she could assert her power for noble purpose.
Which leadership style is the best example for American Jews today? Esther clearly has the edge in Purim costumes, but Vashti’s stock is on the rise in Jewish feminist literature. Vashti’s is a one-chapter story; she exits the stage, and the news cycle moves on. Her refusal is simply a statement of conscience. Meanwhile, Esther’s leveraging of her sexuality and her choices of bedfellows makes her celebrated legacy laden with complications.
Both leadership paradigms offer American Jews lessons for our current moment, which defies clear truths and clean alliances. Given the threats Israel faces and the domestic antisemitism we experience, we wrestle with how best to deploy our limited political and personal capital. Many of us feel pulled between political poles, aligned and at odds with each side on various issues.
Setting aside the internal (and eternal) Jewish debate over the best interests of Israel and the Jewish people, how do we balance that self-interest with our other values? If the return of the 59 hostages still in Gaza is our paramount concern, what becomes of every other issue that has historically mattered? At what point have we betrayed the core of our being or enabled people and positions that contradict our deeply held principles?
It’s not an easy dilemma to resolve. There are those in the Jewish community, who, Vashti-like, refuse to engage with President Donald Trump’s new administration for fear that doing so would be perceived as legitimizing a dishonorable regime — just as there were Jews who shunned the Biden administration for similar reasons. Such a rejection of compromise can feel righteous — but it may risk forfeiting influence over issues of communal concern.
Others, in the mode of Esther, insist on engaging with whoever is in power. Regardless of whether you voted for or against Trump, they argue, the Jewish people don’t have the luxury of moral absolutes or sitting out a round.
We see the Esther and Vashti models playing out everywhere. Thought leaders who refuse to sit on panels with their political opponents, and those who insist on doing so. Professors who refuse to teach on certain campuses and those committed to doing so. Lawmakers who heckle a presidential address from the other side of the aisle and those who applaud politely.
As a congregational rabbi, I identify more with Esther’s pragmatism than Vashti’s principled defiance.
When I was invited to the dedication of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem during Trump’s first term, I went. And when I was invited to light the Hanukkah candles in President Joe Biden’s White House, I also went.
Elected officials of one party are just as welcome in my sanctuary as those of the other party. Business is business and I am in the business of defending the interests of the Jewish people. I believe I can do it better from inside the room.
There may come a time when that room becomes so toxic that, like Vashti, I may find it morally uninhabitable. There may be a time when I feel my pulpit is being used to launder the moral stains of others.
Living like Esther is not easy. It requires constant self-auditing and recalibration. It means being brutally honest as to whether one’s presence helps or hurts one’s cause. Living like Esther tests one’s ability to hold contradictory ideas at once, while being subjected to attack from both sides.
I’m reminded of David ben Gurion’s leadership of the Jewish community in pre-state Palestine, having to balance support for Britain against Nazi Germany while resisting the British White Paper restrictions on immigration.
“We shall fight the war as if there were no White Paper,” he famously said, “and we shall fight the White Paper as if there were no war.” The challenge then — as now — is whether we can stand in defense of our people and not tear each other apart in the process.
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