וַיָּ֩שֶׂם֩ הַמֶּ֨לֶךְ (אחשרש) [אֲחַשְׁוֵר֧וֹשׁ] ׀ מַ֛ס עַל־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְאִיֵּ֥י הַיָּֽם׃
King Ahasuerus imposed tribute on the mainland and the islands.
by Richard Gwynallen
There are many things to contemplate and lessons to learn in the Megillah of Esther, but this sobering line toward the end has for years been for me the most important line in the megillah. Yes, we should celebrate our victories because they come at great cost, and because on the long road to a just society, we will be defending those gains shortly after attaining them. My first rabbi, David Zaslow in Oregon, once remarked that the Exodus was a great act of liberation, and that the rest of history is a great unfolding of liberation, one for which we are responsible, and a story we are not just reading but are a part of today. So, we celebrate the moments along that protracted struggle for liberation.
However, if the king is still the king with all the power the king had previously, and if the system is still the same system that engendered the injustice in the first place, nothing fundamental has changed. At the end of the megillah nothing fundamental has changed.
It is a good reminder for the changes needed today.
I have heard this several times from people of different walks of life, and I agree. Something feels different about this moment in history. We’ve certainly seen war before. We’ve certainly seen right wing movements before. We’ve heard the warnings about climate change for decades. Still, something feels different about this moment. Perhaps it is the resurgence of the right in so many places; the proto-fascist movement in Italy reached as high as the position of prime minister 100 years after Mussolini’s March on Rome. Le Pen in France had the strongest electoral showing for president for a right wing party in decades. Then there is Netanyahu in Israel and Trump in the United States.
People, not just political pundits, are saying that the 2024 election will determine if American democracy will continue. Attacks on voting rights, women’s rights, and long established environmental protections and the social safety net are threatening a crisis in almost every facet of American life.
There’s the trauma in the Jewish community worldwide after more than a thousand Jews were massacred by Hamas’ brutal attack on civilians on October 7th creating fear, panic, and a pain that won’t heal. And there is the cry of misery rising from Gaza of the homeless and starving amidst the rubble and bodies of more than 30,000.
But it is not just the rise of the right and the ravages of war, all of which make the news every day, several times a day. Despite warnings from the scientific community for over 30 years, the lack of willingness to address climate change resulted in 2023 being the hottest year on record since scientists began tracking that data in 1850. As several scientists and environmental activists have said, Climate change is no longer our future; it is our present. And while almost every part of corporate America advertises its “green” initiatives, the five biggest oil companies (Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, TotalEnergies and Chevron) raked in record profits in 2022, nearly $200 billion. The greening of the market isn’t saving our world, but it is becoming quite profitable for companies, which probably means it’s operating just as it was intended to.
The wealth gap yawns so wide that it even made Time Magazine in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic when a RAND report was released that concluded that extreme inequality since 1975 has resulted in $50 trillion being transferred from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. Only in that top 1% has income grown faster than economic growth. The Economic Policy Institute released a report that demonstrated that while worker productivty increased by 65.6% from 1979 – 2021, worker pay grew only by 17.3%. Yet, CEO pay grew by 1,460%.
The clock is ticking louder and louder in this era for working people and the poor, for the oppressed everywhere, and for our shared earth. Reformers would have it that we can fix things one at a time, trim around the edges, make small steps. But the time for such small steps is long past us. We need leadership and the courage for action that meets the challenge that is really before us. We need solidarity that we have not before had. We need fundamental change.
In the midst of spring we celebrate with joy. It is easy to have such joy in spring with new life all around us; sap rising in the trees, trees flowering, lambs being born, vibrant color all around us. We need this strengthening reminder of beauty and the flow of joy it fosters in us.
Leon Trotsky, In one of the final codicils to his will, just months before being assassinated, wrote: “Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”
To paraphrase the Indigenous scholar, KimTallBear, the world is beautiful, the colonialist and capitalist system is bad. I try not to conflate them.
Yes, the challenges feel different at this moment in history. Yet, there is something else occurring in this moment as well. There are the rising voices of youth internationally challenging the slow action on climate change and the systems that fostered it. There is a rise in union organizing. Indigenous people are resisting across the earth and taking a leading role in many struggles, such as the drive to stop the Dakota pipe line. There are demonstrations across the planet on any number of issues, and movements connecting on those issues across national boundaries. There is the possibility for a greater solidarity for fundamental change than has before existed, and in that I feel hope also blowing through the trees this spring. But it requires us all to rise from our single issues, our tribalism, our nationalism, and our sense that we cannot achieve something so big.
In his 1967 speech, Breaking the Silence, Martin Luther King, Jr. said:
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late…. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’
Indeed, this year, the Fast of Esther has more meaning for me. The moment requires much of us, and we must rise to the occasion.
The 18th century Scottish Gaelic poet poses the challenge in the song, An Fhideag Airgid (The Silver Whistle), in response to “Cò a sheinneas an fhideag airigid?” (Who will play the silver whistle? – The whistle piping a notable person on board a ship. In this case, piping in a new era.). The poet responds, Cò a sheinneadh? Cò chanadh nach seinninn fhìn i? (Who will play it? Who would say I would not myself be playing it?) In other words, there will be no savior. We all need to usher in a new era.
As the COP (Conference of the Parties – UN climate change convention) summits, and industry “greening” year after year, and increasing concentration of wealth have demonstrated, those who got us into the present desperate state for humanity and the planet will not be the ones to get us out of it, and the systems that brought us to the brink cannot be left standing. We cannot let it be that in the end the king “imposed tribute on the mainland and the islands.” For the sake of the generations to follow us, we cannot be too late.
Stumbling Toward Torah 