Abstract

This article focuses on the feasting and fasting scenes that permeate the book of Esther. It examines the interactions between fasting and feasting through a lens of hybridity rather than reversal, as is the predominant approach of Western scholarship. To do so, it links the feasting and fasting to Persian and Jewish activity, respectively. Ultimately, it argues that Purim is an example of hybridity as it combines feasting and fasting in its observance, creating a hybrid of Persian and Jewish activity. The construction of Purim as a hybrid is considered in three sections and it relies on Homi K. Bhabha’s postcolonial conception of hybridity: (1) feasting and fasting as Persian and Jewish activity, (2) Esther’s mimicry and the beginning of the hybrid and (3) Purim as a hybrid. Understanding Purim as a hybrid, this article concludes by exploring how this hybrid can offer a challenge to the textual presentation of Persian hegemony in the book of Esther. https://doi.org/10.17159/2312–3621/2021/v34n1a5

Highlights

  • This article focuses on the feasting and fasting scenes that permeate the book of Esther

  • The book of Esther is replete with scenes of both feasting and fasting and, in many ways, these scenes form the narrative framework of the book

  • The prevailing view, notably in a Western context, is that the book of Esther contains a series of reversals which subvert the status quo; the Jewish orphan rises to the top of the Persian court and the Jews’ fasting becomes feasting with the advent of Purim.[3]

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Summary

A INTRODUCTION

The book of Esther is replete with scenes of both feasting and fasting and, in many ways, these scenes form the narrative framework of the book. Bhabha’s postcolonial understanding of hybridity and examine the book of Esther in three discrete sections: (1) the distinction between feasting and fasting and how these are constructed within the text as Persian and Jewish activities respectively, (2) Esther’s feasts and repeated mimicry in chapters five to seven, and (3) the Persian-Jewish/feastingfasting hybrid of Purim in Esth 9. 5 A final note, this article only examines hybridity in reference to feasting and fasting in the book of Esther It does not explore the other ways in which hybrid constructions occur in the text, through the use and mimicry of clothing, performances of gender and Esther’s name. Clines, “Reading Esther from Left to Right,” 38–39, has already begun to consider how clothing is used in this way and how clothing is used in the narrative to signal changes in identity and power

B HYBRIDITY
Persian Feasting
Jewish Fasting
F PURIM AS DISTURBANCE IN THE BOOK OF ESTHER
G CONCLUSION
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