Vashti and Freedom

VASHTI AND THE FREEDOM TO BE
Asher Abrams



This Purim, I played the role of Vashti. Vashti’s story is told in the first chapter of the Book of Esther; and though that story is only a single chapter long, it sets the stage for the dramatic events that follow.
Vashti, the queen of Persia, commits an open act of defiance against the King. After seven days of feasting, King Ahasuerus, in his cups, commands that the his wife the queen be brought before all the men “wearing a royal diadem” – and nothing else, as the traditional interpretation has it. Queen Vashti, furious, refuses this degrading order.
The king is so taken aback that he has to consult his advisers as to what to do next. An official named Memucan opines that Vashti’s insurrection will “make all wives despise their husbands” and that therefore she must be exiled immediately, lest there be “no end of scorn and provocation.” This edict, he continues, should be promulgated “throughout the lands of Persia and Media,” after which the king should take another bride “more worthy” than Vashti, so that “all wives will treat their husbands with respect.” King Ahasuerus does exactly as Memucan instructs.
Let us notice the implications. It is the king’s honor, and not the queen’s, that is of concern here. In fact, simply by insisting on her own dignity and autonomy, the insubordinate queen is a threat to his honor. And finally, the king, as ruler of his country, has an obligation to uphold this patriarchal value system lest it infect the lower classes.
What is the right that was so important to Vashti? Simply put, it is the right to wear clothes. It is the right to define her own boundaries, and to claim her body as her own. It is her right to exist.
It is also the right to present herself to the world in a fashion of her own choosing. Beyond the need to keep warm, beyond our basic instinct for decency, we wear clothes to express ourselves. Getting dressed is the first creative act we do every day. There is something so fundamental about this need that people will risk punishment for it. In contemporary Iran, some women deliberately wear colored socks, or allow a forbidden strand of hair to show, simply to assert their own autonomy in the face of Islamic totalitarianism.
At its most elemental level, clothing allows us to express our gender identification. Perhaps it is not coincidence that those parts of our bodies which must be covered in order to be minimally “dressed” are those very parts which identify us as biologically female or male. By covering ourselves, we create the possibility of defining our own relationship to gender. Transgendered individuals, like the defiant Iranian women, have often risked harrassment and physical violence in order to dress according to their own identities. Those of us who do not identify with our socially dictated “assigned gender” can identify with that Persian queen: Vashti’s right to wear a dress is my right to wear a dress.

Our very survival is linked to our right to self-determination. In the same Iran where women can be flogged for trivial infractions of the dress code, that regime also participates in the wholesale degradation of women. In Tehran alone, some tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of women and girls – some as young as seven years old - have been kidnapped by the regime and sold into sexual slavery. They endure rape, physical abuse, torture, and the worst forms of psychological and spiritual degradation.
The Book of Esther also makes clear the inevitable link between oppression of any kind, and anti-Semitism. The text offers us a glimpse into the workings of Haman’s mind: for him, anyone who does not bow in submission must be an “enemy”. Mordechai’s refusal to bow before Haman is really only the catalyst that releases an explosion of pent-up venom against “a certain people ... whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws.” And how easily is Ahasuerus convinced to put his resources at Haman’s disposal for the plan to “destroy, massacre, and exterminate all the Jews” – especially when a generous payoff to the regime is involved.
As we know, the evil plot is averted at the last minute because the king learns that Esther – the very woman he has chosen to replace the “insubordinate” Vashti, and one of the very people he had targeted for extermination – was responsible, along with her uncle, for saving his life. Perhaps it is at this point that Ahasuerus learns the true meaning of respect, for he takes the singular step of empowering his Jewish subjects to “assemble and fight for their lives”, thus enabling them to secure their own freedom.
In today’s world, the very survival of the Jewish state is threatened by the same foreign powers that show no regard for the dignity and welfare of their own peoples. It is up to the Jews of all lands to play the role of Esther and Mordechai: we must work to bring about fundamental change in the nature of such regimes.