Bachelor sleeps with all 400 Bachelorettes

octopus

Sun, Mar 09 2014, 12:14 pm

greenfire wrote:

it always disturbs me that esther was taken as bait to save everyone else ... especially considering how everyone decries marrying outside of judiasm - yet this was a mitzvah - one where we celebrate & get drunk ?!?!?!

[edited for spelling error]

she gave up her life spiritually and saved the jewish ppl. we have a whole y't to remember her and we name after her. while the purim story is happy on a nat'l level, it is very tragic on a personal level.

Dolly Welsh

Sun, Mar 09 2014, 1:24 pm

I see the personal part of the story as a wild man subdued by a refined and superior woman. He is a rough customer but he cannot be blind to her dignity and worth. Contact with her changes him.

If you pay close attention during the Megillah you can actually see him undergo this character change. In minute, little steps. He is very different at the end from the beginning.

It is quite feminist. We see her power.

Obviously, don't try this at home.

imasoftov

Sun, Mar 09 2014, 1:30 pm

Dolly Welsh wrote:

I see the personal part of the story as a wild man subdued by a refined and superior woman. He is a rough customer but he cannot be blind to her dignity and worth. Contact with her changes him.

If you pay close attention during the Megillah you can actually see him undergo this character change.

It is quite feminist.

Obviously, don't try this at home.

A woman submitting to rape to reform a man is not a feminist story.

Ruchel

Sun, Mar 09 2014, 1:48 pm

I learned Sarah's rape(s??) didn't go all the way and Esther was replaced by a golem (or angel?). Sorry broken brain today... it probably depends which rav you ask...

Anyway yes this story is a tragedy. Once she willingly went to him she couldn't go back to her husband/uncle ever. If I remember well, as long as it was unwilling he could choose not to believe her testimony against herself.

Dolly Welsh

Sun, Mar 09 2014, 2:14 pm

Didn't Avraham present Sarah as his virgin sister, so she would not be immediately kidnapped as a wife would have been? And, while Avraham was trying to stall the negotiations for her, to buy time, didn't the guy who wanted her also get a dream from G-d, warning him not to touch her?

So no, Sarah was not assaulted.

I didn't know about Esther and the angelic substitute.

Isramom8

Sun, Mar 09 2014, 2:50 pm

Zehava wrote:

There's a source that says that every time Esther had to sleep with acheshveirosh a shin daled went in her place. I'm still disturbed though. Especially since she ended up having a child with him. How did such a tzaddekes feel watching her son follow in his fathers footsteps? Also I feel that what Mordechai said את ובית אביך תאבדי. Happened anyway. She left no generations of observant Jews.

Rebbetzin Heller spoke in our community last year and said that Esther was successful in raising a son who allowed the Jews to rebuild the Beit Hamikdash. I asked why Esther was not successful in raising her son to live as a Jew. Rebbetzin Heller acknowledged the pain of that and asked - Are we always successful?

There is a meforash who says that "Vatilakach Esther" - Esther was taken - means that she behaved as karka olam - yielding earth - and made no moves whatsoever to participate in the intimate relationship with Acahshveirosh.

imasoftov

Sun, Mar 09 2014, 5:27 pm

Dolly Welsh wrote:

Hannah Senesh went through worse. And achieved less. But she is well remembered and was also a fine poet.

Joan of Arc got burned at 17.

Purim is not easy material.

It's also not feminist. Feminist is women today who read the megillah. Feminist would have been if Esther cut off Achashverosh's head (or both of them) the first night she was taken to be raped by him. Feminist is the pshat of Yael, before Chazal turned her into a mattress. Feminist would have been a midrash in which Esther asked Mordechai, so, if salvation would have arisen from another place, why did I have to sleep with that pig in the first place?

Feminist would have been Vashti delivering a convincing argument about why she wasn't going to appear (in only) her crown, leaving her as queen (she needs to suffer because she mistreated Jewish maids, let her grow her tail some other time, and have people step on it every day of her miserable life), Esther free to marry Mordechai or whoever else she chose, and Haman a minor functionary in no position to cause any harm. In my shul, when they read the king's decree about how each man should rule the house, people make noise. He doesn't override that decree, does he? Feminist would have been a decree that each spouse should learn the others' language and that instead of government funded cosmetics for the best looking young women, all women would receive an education.

Or even if Chazal had let Esther write her own book, that would have been feminist and not as Bava Batra 15a says אנשי כנסת הגדולה כתבו יחזקאל ושנים עשר דניאל ומגילת אסתר

amother

Mon, Mar 10 2014, 4:16 pm

Dolly Welsh wrote:

Didn't Avraham present Sarah as his virgin sister, so she would not be immediately kidnapped as a wife would have been?
So no, Sarah was not assaulted.

He presented her as his sister so they wouldn't kill him first before raping her. He knew it was likely she would be raped and decided to at least save his own life.
I've heard she definitely was raped.

Dolly Welsh

Mon, Mar 10 2014, 4:32 pm

amother wrote:

Makes no sense. Of course the brother would have avenged the rape of a sister. That would not at all have saved his own life, because they would have killed him anyway. To prevent his avenging her rape.

The other way makes sense. A wife is not a virgin, and those folks considered that you could steal her, if her husband wasn't tough enough to keep her, and Avraham was not in a strong position versus those men. However, because of how their culture worked, they did respect the physical virginity of an unmarried sister. They had that one scruple. They didn't respect marriage, they respected virginity. So they negotiated to buy her. Avraham used that negotiation process to stall.

G-d had to intervene. He sent that dream, saying "no, don't touch her".

I think Sarah may have been secluded, and taken away from Avraham, while the negotiations were going on. That's scary and bad for her, but she was not touched.

I am no scholar, but the text explicitly states, pashat level, that Avraham pretended she was his sister. It specifically states that he engaged in negotiations for her. And it specifically states the other man had a warning dream. None of that goes with her having been raped.

If she had been raped they would have killed Avraham immediately. He would have been inconvenient to leave alive, and they would have been able to do it. That he lived, specifically must mean, that she was not raped.

OK, that's the end of my scholarship. I don't want to go further with that.

Zehava

Mon, Mar 10 2014, 5:16 pm

Dolly Welsh wrote:

The way I learnt was that they DID respect marriage so they'd kill the husband and presto! The woman wouldn't be married anymore. So makes sense why he's say she was his sister.