Judaism
Queen Esther and the Red Rebel Brigade
What is the connection between the climate ‘artivists’ and the story of Purim?
March 13, 2022 12:19
What is the connection between the climate ‘artivists’ and the story of Purim?
March 13, 2022 12:19This Purim I’ll be dressing up as a member of the Red Rebel Brigade “an international performance artivist [sic] troupe” associated with Extinction Rebellion.
To understand the Red Rebel Brigade you have to watch their performances. In their flowing red robes, white faces and theatrically highlighted features, they move in stately formation through public spaces and natural environments, stopping to create silent, expressive tableaux.
They represent the earth and they express the earth’s torment at the hands of humanity. If, as we know from the Torah, the role of a prophet is not to predict the future but to warn about a possible future which must be urgently avoided, then the Red Rebel Brigade is a vivid, phantasmagorical embodiment of the prophetic mode.
The ancient biblical prophets used creative ways to communicate God’s message. Like performance artists, they undertook acts that were evocative, emblematic or even embarrassing to command people’s attention.
Isaiah, for example is instructed to go about naked and barefoot. Ezekiel at various times is required to eat a paper scroll, lie on his side, and eat a cake baked on human excrement.
The Red Rebel Brigade have a commanding eloquence that comes from their unified, and mostly feminine, aesthetic. They use silence and stately movement to cut across a visually noisy world. Their protest performances and the strategies of Queen Esther in the Purim demonstrate exactly how powerful such tools can be.
The Kingdom of Shushan, rather like the world we inhabit, is obscenely materialistic and easily distracted by spectacle. King Ahasuerus throws an ostentatious party “to display the vast riches of his kingdom and the splendid glory of his majesty”. His queen, Vashti, is simply another accessory to be shown off. Her refusal to submit to him arouses the fear that the performance of power is not the same as actual power.
Lest women everywhere come to “despise their husbands in their eyes”, to use the biblical expression, and rise up in rebellion, Vashti is banished and a new bride sought. A “good-looking” woman, “pleasing to the eye”, who will be appropriately submissive.
Queen Esther wins the beauty contest, but in this superficial and deeply paranoid world her position is precarious. And so, in the first chapter of her life at the palace Esther is entirely passive. She says nothing of her background, undergoes extensive beauty treatments and waits to be summoned, all the while learning the ways of the court.
But when Mordecai dresses in sackcloth and ashes and tells the Jews that they have been condemned to death, Esther is ready to instruct him that this is not the way. She sends him appropriate clothing and follows that up with a message explaining that royal protocol forbids anyone from approaching the king without an invitation.
Mordecai urges Esther to be a hero, using language that is both inspiring and also lightly threatening: “If you keep silent (hacharesh tacharishi) in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish.”
With hacharesh tacharishi, Mordecai impels Esther not to stay silent. But the verbal root ch-r-sh also has another meaning, one relating to crafting and devising. The opening of the sentence might also be read as saying something like “you must certainly use yourself as a tool for crafting/devising”.
In Mordechai’s words Esther, perhaps sees the summons, in the words of the Red Rebel Brigade, to turn herself into an “artivist”. Esther is indeed creative, adopting two strategies simultaneously. She takes pious action by fasting for three days, and also does things the Shushan way by dressing up and organising drinking parties.
Our rabbis understood this. Queen Esther is one of seven prophetesses recognised by the Talmud. (Megillah 14b). The prooftext for Esther’s status is the verse, “And it came to pass on the third day that Esther clothed herself in royalty.” The Talmud remarks that the Megillah really ought to specify that Esther clothed herself in royal clothing. Because it doesn’t say this, the Talmud creatively reads the term “royalty” as gesturing at something beyond actual clothing, concluding rather that she “clothed herself with a divine spirit of inspiration”.
The creative misreading allows for Esther both to dress up in royal clothing and also elevates her dress to a form of prophetic behaviour. In fact there is no contradiction here, for prophecy is the robe that Esther dons both literally and metaphorically. She exploits the medium of the spectacle, positioning herself where she can be seen by Ahaseurus and where she will “find favour in his eyes.” She proceeds to curate tableaux which will arouse pity and jealousy in Ahaseurus so as to bring about salvation for her people.
And so to the Red Rebel Brigade. These modern-day prophets and Queen Esthers use beauty to “illuminate the magic realm beneath the surface of all things” and convey an urgent prophetic message about a future disaster we must avert.
Zahavit Shalev is a rabbi at New North London (Masorti) Synagogue
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