Esther: when midrashic methodology leads to halachic leniency

This past weekend saw an overlap between the Daf Yomi calendar and our preparations for Purim, as the subject turned – albeit briefly – to analysing Esther’s conduct. While the discussion lasted only a couple of lines, its implications are enormous and form a central case study in a couple of chapters of Talmud Reclaimed.

The Talmudic passage in question is examining the sins for which a person is required to give up their life rather than commit. These consist of the three “cardinal” sins: murder, idolatry and adultery, as well as any sin which a person is being forced by a non-Jew to commit in public or at a time of religious oppression. The Talmud then questions this conclusion, basing its challenge on the narrative of Esther, who willingly married Achashverosh – a non-Jewish king – rather than surrendering her life, despite her participation in this marriage being a public sin. It proceeds to offer various solutions. What concerns us here, however, is the nature of the Talmud’s question, which is based on the premise that Esther was single at the time of her marriage to Achashverosh. According to this premise, she could not have been committing the sin of adultery, but rather the non-cardinal sin of intermarriage, with the aggravating factor that her marriage was very much a matter of public knowledge.

Tosafot examine the Talmud’s question in view of a Talmudic teaching from the first chapter of tractate Megillah (13a), which treats Esther as having been married to Mordechai before she wedded Achashverosh. Based on this teaching, they ask why the Talmud did not pose a greater question: surely Esther was not only marrying a non-Jew, but was also committing adultery – one of the three cardinal sins – for which the Talmud would expect her to have given up her life? Based upon his synthesis of these Talmudic passages, Rabbeinu Tam, often seen as the most creative of the Tosafists, proposes an original and far-reaching principle. He concludes that, since the Talmud's challenge in the primary passage was not concerned with the question of Esther committing adultery with Achashverosh, even though Esther was already married to Mordechai, we can deduce that a sexual relationship with a non-Jewish man does not constitute full adultery.

Citing as support his own innovative expansion of a separate Talmudic teaching, he proceeds to issue a practical legal ruling to the following effect: a married Jewish woman who has a sexual relationship with a non-Jewish man who later converts to Judaism, is permitted to marry him. While a married Jewish woman’s sexual relationship with a Jewish man would have prohibited the two from subsequently marrying, Rabbeinu Tam permitted marriage in the case of a non-Jewish convert on the basis of his deduction that adultery with a non-Jewish man does not constitute full adultery.

The significance here is twofold. First, the source teaching that Esther and Mordechai were married is an aggadic inference which many of the peshat commentators to the Megillat Esther do not understand to be literal. As the Rashba comments on this passage: “We do not pose questions from aggadic sources”. Secondly, even setting aside the fact that Esther’s marriage is an aggadic addition, it is still far from simple that it should be taken into account when interpreting the sugya in Sanhedrin.

This Talmudic interpretation of Rabbeinu Tam, and the legal ruling that it produces, is a classic example of the creative Tosafist methodology which presumes that disparate Talmudic passages should be read in tandem and then introduces interpretative and legal innovations in order to reconcile them. The Maimonidean-Geonic approach to this matter, by contrast, having identified the primary Talmudic passage which deals with this area of law, does not presume that the authors of these passages were necessarily in agreement with the authors of the separate aggadic teaching that Esther and Mordechai were married. The Kessef Mishneh commentary of Rav Yosef Karo on Rambam’s ruling wholly dismisses the possibility that he took the aggadic passage into account.

In terms of the question of which sins require people give up their lives rather than transgress, the primary passage in tractate Sanhedrin does not distinguish between a woman committing adultery with a Jewish or non-Jewish man. Similarly, in terms of whether participation in an adulterous relationship prohibits any future marriage between its two parties, the primary Talmudic sources do not disclose any distinction based upon the man’s religious status. If anything, they appear specifically to include all sorts of men in this law. These laws as codified by Rambam therefore make no distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish men.

This also has potential implications for the analysis of Reb Chaim Brisk (opening pages of his famous Chiddushim al HaRambam) which takes on the assumption that Rambam did indeed combine these passages – just as Tosafot did – and proposes some wonderfully intricate solutions to explain how he nevertheless reached different legal conclusions. But that is the subject of another chapter altogether.

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Holy priests and Purim costumes

A recent post on this group examined the concept of holy times and places within Judaism. We cited sources that taught how nothing in the physical world possesses intrinsic holiness – it is only revered for as long as it is used correctly as a means of connecting us to God.

The same principle can be applied to the idea of intrinsically holy people – most notably to kohanim – the one group of Jews that the Torah labels “holy to God”. In this commentary to parashat Tetzaveh, Rabbi S. R. Hirsch highlights the fact that a kohen’s service in the Mikdash is only valid so long as he is wearing the required priestly apparel. After exploring the profound moral and spiritual symbolism which the kohanic clothing contains, Rav Hirsch explains that it is this clothing – not the priest himself – that represents the ideals of the priesthood.

“Without these garments, the kohen is merely an ordinary individual. His actions take on the character of personal preference…the individual personality of the officiating kohen is exposed for all to see, and the weaknesses and faults that afflict even the best among us could easily portray him as a flawed character, far from the ideal that should be embodied by the offerings as a model in harmony with God’s Torah…When he is clothed in his priestly garments, the kohen does not appear as he actually is, but as he should be according to the dictates of God’s Torah. By the very act of donning the priestly garments for his service in the Sanctuary, he makes both himself and those around him aware of his own inadequacy in meeting the standards of the Sanctuary.”

While priests are exclusively selected to serve from the descendants of Aharon – representing the fact that their office was merited through seeking peace and love of others – on a practical level it was made up of fallible individuals. Many of these individuals would not have been thought of as exceptionally moral or righteous people. By donning these special garments, writes Rav Hirsch, the priests cease to serve as individuals – but rather represent their office. It was this priestly ideal which the people were to regard with reverence and holiness rather than the particular humans who performed the service at any point in time. 

This insight provides a greater insight into the profound role that clothing plays within Jewish thought. Clothes, writes Rav Hirsch, are not merely an external adornment. Rather they have meaning that must be internalised not only by onlookers who observe them but also by wearers themselves. As we count down the days until Purim, it is notable that the role of clothing features more centrally in the book of Esther than in any other biblical work.

The opening chapter sees Vashti summoned to parade before the king in her royal crown. Malbim understands this to be highly significant: Achashverosh sought to demonstrate to the gathered dignitaries that Vashti’s claim to the crown was subject to HIS whim – despite her superior royal pedigree. Later on we see Esther “donning royalty” in order to petition the king. Haman’s eye for power is exposed by his suggestion to Achashverosh that he be allowed to wear the king’s clothing. And the shift in dynamics between the Jews’ perilous fate in the first half of the Megillah and their subsequent ascendancy is skillfully underscored by Mordechai’s contrasting clothing. Upon hearing of the initial genocidal decree Mordechai goes out in the streets wearing sackcloth and ashes – a parallel later verse describes Mordechai in celebratory mood “clad in royal apparel of turquoise and white with a large gold crown and robe of fine linen and purple”.

Perhaps the lesson to take away from the priestly garments – and the widespread custom to wear costumes on Purim – is that holiness, like clothing, is not intrinsic. Like the costumes that we will put on ourselves in the days ahead, righteousness and kindness is something that we must choose to cloak ourselves in. These aspirations that we identify may be ideals that are not always lived up to – there is “no man on Earth who is righteous and does not sin”. The message of the priestly garments is that, at the very least, our moral and spiritual ideals are values that we hold up and aspire to work towards over the course of our lifetime.

First posted to Facebook 5 March 2023, here.

Drunken Maimonideans and a sobering reality

In his description of the mitzvot of Purim, Rambam obligates a person to “drink wine until he becomes intoxicated and falls asleep in a stupor”. While this requirement stands out as a startlingly unusual religious command – I recall a non-Jewish teacher reacting in utter disbelief to the very idea of it – inebriation would appear particularly harmful to the entire religious enterprise as understood by Rambam, who places so much emphasis on a constantly rational frame of mind. As Maharal, who follows Rambam’s approach in this area, puts it: “Intellect is the connection between man and God, and through intoxication this connection is severed”. What possible religious benefit could such a non-salubrious celebration offer?

An early chapter of Judaism Reclaimed explores a fundamental dichotomy in Rambam’s thought. On the one hand, he idealises intellectual comprehension of rational divine truths as the ultimate religious achievement but at the same time he openly recognises that the human mind is not naturally conditioned for such comprehension. This recognition of the realities of the human condition forms the basis of Rambam’s explanation of the role of Torah and mitzvot as preparatory tools for enabling the intellect to comprehend divine truths. The existence of worldly barriers to intellectual achievement also prompts Rambam to advise that the majority of people must, at least initially, be made aware of God through received tradition rather than rational speculation.

Commenting upon a cryptic passage from this week’s parashah, Rambam (Shemoneh Perakim) takes this idea further. In the aftermath of the Golden Calf, Moshe asks: “Give me a true understanding of Your essence”, to which God responds: “No man can see Me and live.” Rambam explains that even Moshe, who had perfected his intellect and traits to the ‘ultimate’ level in order to perceive objective divine truths, still had one significant barrier preventing him from truly perceiving God: “that the human intellect is not separated [from the body] … his aspiration [objective knowledge of God] was unattainable because he was a physical being”. This principle, that the human intellect is inhibited by its connection to the physical body, appears again in Mishneh Torah where Rambam writes that the soul in the World to Come is able to comprehend God and divine truths to an extent that had previously been impossible when attached to its physical body.

Intoxication can thus serve to remind fervent Maimonideans, who worship at the altar of rational theorising, to be mindful of the outer limits of the human intellect and not place more confidence in the fruit of their rational deliberations than Rambam himself was prepared to. To quote Maimonidean scholar, Prof Marvin Fox: “The widespread failure to recognise Maimonides’ rigorous awareness of the limits of reason continues to be one of the mysteries of the history of Jewish philosophy”.

On a separate note, there is an additional Purim teaching in which Rambam summons his students to cast their glances beyond the walls of their study halls and embrace the needs of the wider community:

It is preferable for a person to be more liberal with his donations to the poor than to be lavish in his preparation of the Purim feast or in sending portions to his friends. For there is no greater and more splendid happiness than to gladden the hearts of the poor, the orphans, the widows, and the converts. One who brings happiness to the hearts of these unfortunate individuals resembles the Divine Presence, which Isaiah describes as having the tendency "to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive those with broken hearts."

As Rambam powerfully affirms in his conclusion to the Moreh, the sort of refined intellectual connection to God which his Judaism so greatly emphasises is one which goes hand-in-hand with personal refinement and empathy for the feelings of others. At the peak of his religious philosophy, Rambam appears to view these areas of endeavour as representing complementary rather than contradictory approaches towards achieving a connection to God.

This post combines ideas from various chapters of Judaism Reclaimed: Philosophy and Theology in the Torah. 

First posted to Facebook on 8 March 2020, here.