How far is Shushan? I’m asking because it’s a scary place in which I would not want to live. It’s a place where a few individuals hold our fate — the fate of the Jewish community — in their hands.

Purim is the story of how Jewish fate can hinge on volatile personalities and what we do when history feels personal instead of predictable. Haman decides to kill all the Jews because Mordecai won’t bow down to him. One insecure and vengeful vizier feels disrespected by one uncooperative Jew.

You can read this as being about larger societal trends of antisemitism and micro-rebellions, about economics and power, but we can also read this as being strongly about the particular personalities involved. 

How are the Jews saved? Esther, a Jewish woman, manages to be in the right place at the right time and curries favor just right so that the bumbling King Achashverosh takes her (and our) side. As Mordechai says to her: “Who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a time.” (Esther 4:14)

There was a time in our world, not so long ago, where it almost seemed that individuals, with their personal eccentricities and fixations, might matter less, because the arc of history would inevitably bend toward justice. Societal trends favoring technocrats and experts would usher in a less frictional, fraught and frightening world, where process and logic, research and science, would eliminate the worst inclinations of humanity and smooth out the instability of individual leaders and their foibles.   

But history is back. We now see personalities still drive outcomes. We can all think of current leaders whose personal styles are shaping world events.

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It’s easy to say that if one person hadn’t been there, someone else would have risen in their place. But it’s not obvious, at least to me, that any of these unique, large personalities, are replaceable, and not unique in their milieu. 

The great anxiety of the Purim story is how precarious our situation was and how we had to rely on unreliable individuals. 

Every day, it feels more and more like we are living in Shushan.  We may not be in great communal danger yet, but the possibility feels less absurd than I’d like.

So what are we to do?  There are at least three responses, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. 

One factor that has made the last 50-plus years a golden age for Jews in America has been the strong rule of law and democracy in our nation. We, as Americans, and especially as Jews, can work to strengthen our democracy and democratic (small “d”) institutions. A strong national consensus that any kind of bigotry, antisemitism included, is unacceptable, protects us as well as other minorities. 

A very different response is the building of personal relationships with those in power, who, presumably, have the power to protect us. Medieval Jewish communities in Europe often were protected by a non-Jewish leader who saw Jews as economically advantageous. It was a mutually beneficial, transactional relationship: Jewish economic activity in exchange for safety and protection. It worked for us until it didn’t. Jews were expelled at least once from nearly every European country.  But it’s certainly better than the other option: being considered undesirable by an unpredictable, powerful ruler.  A third option is prayer and faith. God, famously, does not appear in any direct way in the Book of Esther. But Mordechai’s suggestion to Esther that “she attained her royal position for just such a time” can easily be read as seeing God’s hand at work. The Jews of Shushan pray and fast, and their prayers are answered, whether though by chance, by fate or by God, is up to us to decide.   

Purim can be a mirror for us to hold up to our own world, and the further Shushan feels from us, the sillier we can be on Purim.  As Shushan gets closer, the story becomes less a farce and more a warning. 

May Shushan feel far away, and may we do all we can to keep it so.