Donald Trump is a modern American man, one of the most powerful people in the world, thrice married and not known for his meekness. The heroine of the Purim story, Esther, was an orphaned Jewess from ancient Persia plucked out of obscurity to be queen, remembered for her courage to speak truth to power. Hardly…
Israeli director Samuel Maoz’s vivid, memorable — and not easy to watch — film, “Foxtrot,” has already generated controversy in Israel. Minister of Culture Miri Regev has accused him of being a traitor and done everything in her power to generate a boycott against the film. Maoz has received death threats. At the same time,…
Midway through the Jewish Museum Berlin’s exhibit “Welcome to Jerusalem,” a sprawling tour through the Holy City, one finds a particularly unsettling image. No, it isn’t an especially gruesome crucifixion, a battle scene of the Crusades or a photograph of carnage after a terrorist attack. The offending picture shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gripping…
Every time a scandal erupts around the sexual behavior of a powerful man, someone seems to ask, “Well, why didn’t she say no?” It so happens that the Book of Esther begins with the story of a woman who “says no,” and it demonstrates that the consequences of “saying no” can be severe: Queen Vashti…
If Mordechai and Esther saw what 2018 had done to Purim, I like to think they’d be satisfied. The day is commemorated across Jewish denominations with celebration, exchanging of gifts, donations to the poor, and public Megillah readings—just as they requested. King Achashverosh, perhaps, would be less amused with how history remembered his reign. But…
When André Aciman was 14 years old, his family was expelled from Egypt. He has returned only once, 30 years after his departure, he told me in January over coffee on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “I realized that I’ve always hated Egypt, I never liked it,” he said. Still, the experience of living in and…
Standing in the cemetery, a heavy quiet suffocated the hundreds of mourners of Alyssa Alhadeff. Not a sound could be heard, not even the cicadas, with their ever-present chirp in the Florida humidity, made a noise. Then, the thump of dirt on a box too hollow. Thump. Thump. A piercing cry of anguish, “No! No…
Purim is right around the corner. It’s the holiday in which we commemorate a crazy, long-ago time when wealthy Jews were targeted by anti-Semites, and a vain, know-nothing ruler did nothing to stop it. Sorry, that’s this past week. First, of course, came the horrific mass-murder of 17 people, 14 of them students and five…
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