Feeling the debilitating effects of an expansive, pandemic-enhanced midriff, I recently signed up to a local gym. I found that everyone there takes fitness extremely seriously. Faced with such solemnity, I couldn’t help but try to lighten the intense atmosphere. I asked the gym instructor: “Can you teach me to do the splits?” He replied, “How flexible are you?” I said: “I can’t make Saturdays.”
The joke is underpinned by a more profound point. I am an Orthodox rabbi. Although I grew up as an atheist footballer, I became observant at university and took on observing the laws of Shabbat. This means I’m not going get in a car or go shopping on a Saturday. Ever. Even if Liverpool are in the Champions League final, there’s no flexibility for me.
In embracing Judaism, it seems that I also became quite stubborn, proudly adopting the dogged determination inherent in the Jewish tradition and using it to (hopefully) stick to my principles, no matter what.
On Purim this week, we will read the two-millennia-old Book of Esther. The story is infused with this same recalcitrance. At the outset of the narrative, we find another Jew demonstrating his inflexibility. Mordechai refuses to bow down to Haman and the idols hung around the infamous antisemite’s neck: “And all the king’s servants that were within the king’s gate would bow and prostrate themselves to Haman, as indeed the king had commanded, but Mordechai would now bow down and would not prostrate himself.” (Esther 3:2)
This defiance fuelled Haman’s rage so deeply that he hatched a plot for revenge to be meted out upon Persia’s Jews over one day. As the story goes, his plan splendidly backfired, but few could have predicted salvation at the time. Doubtless, many would have criticised Mordechai for his gumption and refusal, perhaps blaming him for provoking Haman’s genocidal plans. “Just bow once,” they might have said. “Think of holy matters as you bow; avert your eyes, find an Halachic loophole, negotiate, settle, collaborate.”
But Mordechai refused to be drawn into compromise. Mordechai’s defiance does not stand in isolation. From the Maccabis at the time Chanukah to the Warsaw ghetto uprising, it seems this is what Jews often do.
This national characteristic of resistance may provide the secret to Jewish survival against all odds. I once heard of a secular Jewish boy living in Texas whose gym instructor asked him to bow down for a routine. He refused twice. “Jews don’t bow down,” the boy insisted. All his friends dumped him and he even received death threats. His parents then sent him to a parish school. Every morning there was mass, where the boy was told to consume the wafer and wine. He declined.
One day, a new priest commanded the boy to conform and threatened him repeatedly. The boy ended up becoming a rabbinic scholar in Israel. Defiance doesn’t worry about what it’s up against. It doesn’t cower in the face of aggressive advances. The Jewish spirit remains resolute, proud of its values and of the moral lessons a Jew is expected to embody.
We are asked to bow down to many things in our world today: celebrities, money, status, materialism. Purim and Mordechai teach us that we don’t have to. Perhaps the spirit of Mordechai resides in Jewish Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky. Faced with the terrifying Russian aggression and intimidation, lesser people would have abandoned ship. Many would have given up hope when realising how they were so dramatically outnumbered. But Zelensky walks in the footsteps of a Mordechai, who refused to bow down. He has stood tall in the face of the threat facing him and shown the world that it is possible to find dignity in defence of what is right.
More broadly, Purim inspires me to free myself from being forced to pay homage to things in life that are, in reality, devoid of true value. It is a clarion call to never give in to the idols of the times and stand tall regardless of the swirling headwinds that seek to shake us.
Jonathan Hughes is rabbi of Radlett United Synagogue.
