Pondering Purim Parallels

(hamevin yavin)

A politician who…

• is self-indulgent and revels in lavish, vulgar displays of personal power

• being a misogynist and serial sexual predator, goes through wives the way a chocoholic goes through candy bars, and delights in demeaning women

• erupts into fits of rage when others don’t comply with his demand for slavish loyalty

• lacks sufficient attention span to read but gets someone else to break down the synopsis for him

• humors Jew-hating self-seekers yet…

• has Jewish family members and…

• when push comes to shove, somehow comes through for us.

Yes, that describes Donald Trump, but there are obvious parallels between him and a major character in the book of Esther and story of Purim (this week celebrated from evening to evening on Monday and Tuesday, March 2-3; in walled cities the day after):

Achashverosh, who…

• likes to show off how high and mighty he is, throwing an over-the-top stag party to wrap up a gigantic royal celebration that lasted half a year

• presides over a harem and, at that big bash, orders Queen Vashti to put on her crown and strip naked to dance in front of the guys

• loses his temper and divorces her over her refusal to humiliate herself as he demanded

• bored and restless, summons a court officer to read him from the royal log

• has a prime minister, Haman, who’s plotting to kill off the Jews, but…

• chose, as replacement wife, a Jew, Esther, and…

• in the end, gives us cover we need to fight back and defeat Haman.

Trump came to our aid last year when he bombed Iran to weaken its nuclear capabilities and pressured Hamas to release Israeli hostages. Disparage him though we may, we cannot deny these facts.

He and Achashverosh are vile creeps, but, as each story plays out, they turn out to serve our best interests. What gives here? How wrap our collective head around this fortuitous synchrony between narcissistic bullies’ antics and our existential priorities as am yisrael?

One myth Jewish people’s long association with Christian Europe and its colonial offshoots drilled into our brains is the belief that our worth depends on being willing to submit to a spiritual purity test based on their moral criteria - ones that, mind you, they don’t apply to themselves.

Here I mean to build upon an observation I’ve shared with you before (see my October 23, 2025 post, “Salvation, Stupidity, and Sleaziness”). I noted that our determination to endure as a nation at times makes for odious bedfellows. The follow-up point I’m pressing now is that we as Jews ought not comply with ethical criteria of another culture that has served us ill!

Jews who’ve lived in the West must uproot its ethos from their hearts: Being Jewish is not ancillary to or conditional upon dutifully falling in line with Western ideals. Don’t let yourself be cast as the compliant martyr in a Christian morality play - ready to sacrifice yourself for some abstract universal “greater good.”

The concrete priority for Jews is to remain alive! That is not the most important thing but is where we have got to start. Without it, what else can there be? Survival is a prerequisite for well-being.

The Trump-Achashverosh parallel should shake Jews into a reckoning with the kind of world we actually live in, thus, the sorts of options available to us as we strategize our next step through the political minefield. Make no excuses for “enlightened” progressives who’re turning their backs on us and siding with adversaries who mean us harm.

Nor pretend that foolish, vainglorious tyrants who come to our aid do so for altruistic reasons. (Why expect that when - favoring pragmatism over idealism - we’re using them for our own self-interested reasons!)

Exegetes sometimes found themselves struggling to decipher tortuous Torah passages leading into logical complications that, if admitted openly, would make the pious rabbi look like a heretic. So, with a wink and a nod and maybe a little chuckle to finesse the embarrassing contradiction, a sage would cryptically comment: Hamevin yavin / “The one who knows knows.”

As we enter the month of Adar, which ushers in Purim, our joy swells. Like the swollen heads of Achashverosh and Trump.

Yes, the two of them are contemptible clowns… who helped us stay alive.

Many we thought we could count on - the liberal/progressive crowd whose values we supposedly shared but whose shameful conduct belies their extravagantly inflated certainty of their own virtue - wouldn’t lift a finger to help us and are even helping our enemies pile on the abuse.

It’s all crazy and it’s all true. How’re you gonna wrap your head around that?

Hamevin yavin.

(https://pixabay.com/illustrations/ai-generated-man-donald-trump-8031911/)