March 10, 2021

The holiday of Purim, which we recently celebrated, tells the classic tale of a Jewish queen, who, with the help of her relative, stops a genocide against her people. We often look at this story through the same lens we did as children, likely encouraged by the parties and costumes and cookies.

But when you really think about it, the Book of Esther has many elements that just don’t make sense. For example, Mordecai tells Esther that a decree has been issued to destroy the Jewish people and that now is the time to reveal her identity as a Jew and champion her nation. Esther responds that going to the king unbidden risks the death penalty unless the king holds out his gold scepter.

Esther hadn’t been called to her husband in the past thirty days, and she asks Mordecai to wait until he calls her next, but Mordecai tells her there’s no time to waste. Esther declares a three-day fast and tells her cousin, “If I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16). We barely have time to fear for our heroine’s life before we are told that she has found favor in Achashverosh’s eyes, and he asks her, “What is your request? Ask even for half of my kingdom and I will give it to you,” (Esther 5:3).

Of course, we know the end of the story, so we don’t question Esther’s actions, but that line seems like the perfect opening to ask the king to spare the Jews’ lives and put Haman to death. Achashverosh just offered Esther half of the known world. Why does Esther delay her request until a dinner party?

In order to understand Esther’s decision, we must learn more about the king. Achashverosh was born to a poor family but worked his way up through the army until he was offered Vashti — the Babylonian king’s daughter — as a bride. That marriage, however, was famously dysfunctional. Vashti loved to remind Achashverosh that he was only king because of his marriage. Achashverosh became obsessed with solidifying his power over Persia and decided the best way to do this would be to get rid of his wife. But he couldn’t just kill the queen.

Persia had a law that a formal decree from the king cannot be reneged and that anyone who openly disobeyed the king should be put to death. On the final night of a one-hundred-and-eighty-day party, Achashverosh decreed “to bring Queen Vashti before the king wearing a royal crown and display her beauty” (Esther 1:11) to everyone present. This demand seems like the result of drunkenness and misogyny, but when you think about how Achashverosh came to power, his request makes a lot of sense. Either Vashti agrees, publicly submitting to his power, or she doesn’t, thereby securing death. Vashti, of course, refused and was killed, giving Achashverosh all the power.

In addition to his obsession with power, Achashverosh had an obsession with the Jewish people. The Me’am Lo’ez explains that while Achashverosh was still married to Vashti, an astrologer told him that a Jew would succeed him. He thought this meant that the Jews would rebel against him and usurp the throne, rather than the fact that his future son (with Esther) would become king. As a result of Achashverosh’s obsession, Esther conceals her identity to suggest that she has no allegiances to anyone but the king himself.

Esther faces the same dilemma that Diaspora Jews have faced throughout exile. How can she prove herself to be a good and loyal Persian while protecting her own people? That dilemma is why, instead of asking upfront for the king to spare her people, Esther feigns shyness and submission. She sets up a plot to make Haman’s death decree seem like an affront to the throne rather than to the Jewish people, arguing that Haman was trying to take away the king’s beloved wife as well as Mordecai, the man who saved Achashverosh from an assassination plot.

Haman’s accusation against the Jews also plays a role in Esther’s decision. When Haman asks Achashverosh for permission to destroy the Jews, instead of mentioning them by name, he says, “There is a certain nation, scattered and dispersed among the other nations in all the provinces of your kingdom, whose laws are different from any other nation and who do not obey the king’s laws and it is not in Your Majesty’s interest to tolerate them” (Esther 3:8). Haman’s covert accusation was that Jews’ loyalties lay with their own people, rather than with the government.

Haman’s plot comes directly after Mordecai refused to prostrate himself before Haman, in violation of Persian law. This rivalry actually predated the bowing incident; when Haman and Mordecai were both generals in the king’s army, Haman sold himself as a slave to Mordecai after he foolishly wasted all of his soldiers’ supplies. Simply put, Haman’s accusation of dual loyalty was a cover for his own insecurities.

Dual loyalty, unfortunately, is an anti-Semitic conspiracy that still persists to this day. The Anti-Defamation League found that 44% of Americans agree with the statement that Jews stick together more than other Americans, 24% agreed that they are more likely to be loyal to Israel than to America and 12% agreed that Jews do not care what happens to anyone but their own kind. Worldwide surveys produced an even more frightening response, with an estimated 41% of respondents believing that Jews hold more loyalty to Israel than to their own respective countries.

Dual loyalty, unfortunately, is an anti-Semitic conspiracy that still persists to this day.

In American politics, we find Haman reaching out of his grave to reaffirm his disgusting theories. In 2019, when senators worked to combat the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib wrote, “they forgot what country they represent.” When President Joe Biden appointed Anthony Blinken, a Jewish man, as secretary of state, Tlaib rushed to tweet, “So long as he doesn’t suppress my First Amendment right to speak out against Netanyahu’s racist and inhumane policies. The Palestinian people deserve equality and justice.” Apparently she forgot what country she represents, considering she couldn’t stand to see a Jewish man appointed to office without immediately making it about Palestine.

Similarly, in 2019, we saw Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s famous “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby” tweet, which caused outrage in the Jewish community for its charge of dual loyalty and for reaffirming the trope that all Jews control the world’s finances. One cannot help but be reminded of Haman’s accusation against the Jewish people to Achashverosh.

Before the story in the Megillah, Haman had worked to prevent the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash (The Holy Temple) — which would signal the Jews’ ability to return to the Land of Israel — because, he alleged, they would rebel and refuse to pay taxes (Ezra 4:7-16). There is an obvious parallel between the Biblical anti-Semites preventing Jews from returning to their homeland and the ones within our government who aim to do the same.

Haman’s death decree instructed the people of the Persian empire “to destroy, massacre, and exterminate all the Jews… and to plunder their possessions” (Esther 3:13). Rather than the concentration camps of the Holocaust or torture chambers of the Inquisition, Haman knew the best way to get rid of the Jews would be to allow the general population to do it themselves. Jew-haters were given permission to come out of the shadows and act upon their bigotry from the day the decree was issued until the day it went into effect eleven months later. Without access to their homeland and their Temple, Jews were perceived as a weak, easy target. Fortunately, we proved them wrong, but the lesson stands: Anti-Zionism provides a cover and a means for people to express their anti-Semitic views.

Anti-Semitism is a nonsensical monster that is born out of insecurity and baseless hatred. It shapeshifts from generation to generation, but its root never changes. The Megillah allows us to identify this beast and teaches us how to destroy it: through Jewish unity. Haman’s allegation of our being dispersed and scattered was negated as soon as the Jews came together in fast, prayer and self-defense.

We can fight the Hamans of today by coming together in the same way. Remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you were leaving Egypt. You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under Heaven. Do not forget.

Hila Oz moved to Israel 7 months ago from Los Angeles after graduating from UCLA, and she’s currently an activist and educator. Follow on her Twitter @toteskosh.

Are Jews white? This question keeps appearing in different forms within Jewish communities and in broader circles of society. It is often driven by news: from controversy surrounding a recent BBC (non-Jewish) panel debate about whether Jews should be considered an ethnic minority, to uproar about Gal Gadot playing Cleopatra in an upcoming movie, to heavily publicized battles over California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.

Implications of whether Jews are white and related questions about Jewish societal power and influence bear upon a number of important aspects of Jewish life. Their impact extends to Jewish inclusion in intersectional organizing and to the perceived legitimacy of Jewish claims of vulnerability or discrimination (including regarding the Jewish state). More fundamentally, they can undermine the right of Jews to self-define framing the Jewish experience according to concepts and language that reflect the unique nature of Jewish vulnerability, including that it tracks differently from other dominant experiences of oppression.

Questions of Jewish whiteness and Jewish oppression arise in the context of today’s contemporary progressive discourse, which is centered on skin color- and class-based conceptual categories and oriented to radical change. It has increasingly affected the way Jewish communities and agendas are positioned within progressive circles and on the broader left.

Within contemporary progressive discourse evolves a new strain of an old threat: “erasive anti-Semitism.” Whereas recent anti-Semitism on the left most directly posed a threat to pro-Israel agendas, erasive anti-Semitism also extends to U.S. Jewish communal ones. It threatens not only the Jewish national collective but also the broad Jewish collective. At stake is the very right to define Jewish identity, experience and vulnerability.

Within contemporary progressive discourse evolves a new strain of an old threat: “erasive anti-Semitism.” At stake is the very right to define Jewish identity, experience and vulnerability.

What is erasive anti-Semitism? In a soon-to-be-published Reut report (of which I am lead author), we build upon a concept coined by author Ben Freeman to describe a de-facto undermining of Jewish narrative self-determination. It is a “by-product” of a conceptual mismatch that occurs when contemporary progressive paradigms meet the Jewish experience, evident when Jewish identities and agendas are challenged within, and excluded from, progressive movements and discourse.

Importantly, erasive anti-Semitism does not necessarily feed on hatred; rather, it is sustained by an acceptance of prevalent framing on the progressive left. Its main disseminators are not anti-Semites, despite engaging in acts of erasive anti-Semitism. At the same time, there is a marginal fringe that purposefully advances anti-Jewish and anti-Israel agendas utilizing its tenets, and continues to amass influence on the left. They are able to exploit contemporary progressive paradigms to challenge Jewish inclusion and support for Jewish and pro-Israel agendas on the left.

But the potency of erasive anti-Semitism’s threat lies in a tricky loop it sets off: Being designated as a “white oppressor” means you don’t get to define the terms of conversations, the pertinent features defining your identity or the priority level your perceived vulnerability receives. It confers upon its bearer an implicit obligation to renounce the right to contest it.

Progressive circles often identify the Jewish experience as uniformly part of, or disproportionately responsible for, oppressive power structures that the progressive movement is fighting against. As a result, the Jewish right to narrative self-determination — and ability to challenge or contribute to shaping Jewish positioning in progressive paradigms — can effectively be confiscated.

This framework risks neutralizing Jewish voices on Jewish and pro-Israel agendas, challenging the legitimacy of Jewish advocacy for individual or collective Jewish security and against discrimination. Within progressive frameworks, Jewish collectives and individuals can implicitly or explicitly be expected, by acknowledging their privilege and power status, to renounce claims of prejudice, discrimination or insecurity experienced individually or collectively.

The good news is that questions such as “Are Jews white?” do keep coming up and are opening important conversations. This provides us with the chance to assert ownership over Jewish self-definition — which may not always fit neatly in dominant conceptual categories — within progressive discourse.  

The question provides us with the chance to assert ownership over Jewish self-definition.

Currently, these conversations remain at the stage of causing confusion. Dividing Jews on the basis of these conceptual categories generates rancor within Jewish communities, exacerbates tensions around the role of race within Jewish communities and threatens the basis of connection between world Jewry and Israel — the notion of Jewish peoplehood.

Now is the time for a more focused inter- and intra-communal dialogue. We do not have to answer whether Jews are white but seek to understand what this dominant framing means to Jewish identity, empowerment and ability to self-define externally.

From this dialogue, bold, progressive Jewish leadership can guide a process aiming to describe and combat erasive anti-Semitism: applying a broadly shared understanding of what it looks like and ensuring that Jews have the right, like other societal groups, to define their own experience. Doing so offers an opportunity not only to re-assert Jewish voices on the broader left, it can also introduce a more fundamental conversation about Jewish identity and Jewish peoplehood amidst the disruptive period we inhabit.

Daphna Kaufman is an independent consultant in research, communications, and strategy, and is the lead author of Reut’s report on the emerging threat posed by erasive anti-Semitism. The full Reut report characterizing the erasive anti-Semitism threat and offering response guideline was initiated and commissioned by the Julis Foundation for Multi-Disciplinary Thinking and will be published in the coming days and be accessible here.