As I was revising last Purim’s blog post Esther’s Mussar Humility Lesson, I had a shocking realization. Esther is a Jewish Woman of Color.
Could that be true? I asked myself. I’ve always thought of her as white.
She must have been. The story takes place in Persia, and Persian people have darker skin.
In the painting to the left, notice how Esther has white skin and the servants have dark skin. I absorbed a cultural transformation: We’ve turned a Person of Color into a white person.
I did some research online, and found this wonderful story that describes what happened when a young boy heard a description of Queen Esther as someone with beautiful brown skin and hair in braids. He started jumping up and down, saying “Like me! I have brown skin too.” This young Jewish boy with a white mother and a dark skinned father saw himself in the Jewish narrative for the first time.
And I got an inkling of how it must feel to be a Jewish Woman of Color. I’ve read articles about Jews of Color feeling like they don’t fit in because in the synagogue people automatically think they are a guest or worse. Or they are ignored and not seen.
I admit, I felt a little sick to my stomach. It was confusing as my body coped with the discord of wanting to be inclusive, and my unconscious “elevation” of one of our greatest heroes to whiteness. I did not see Queen Esther for who she was.
In the words of Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, The ultimate value you can give a person is to treat a person seriously, to take notice of that person. When you treat a person lightly and you don’t acknowledge them, you sit at a table and talk to all your friends, ignoring the one person who sits by themselves you are stripping this person of their value in effect giving them a curse. – Alei Shor Chapter 8
This offers us an opportunity for a Purim Mussar Practice.
***********Here’s The Mussar Practice***********************
Name Queen Esther as a Jewish Woman of Color, especially if no people of color are around.
Whether or not you are Jewish, you are invited to participate in this practice. Please join me in this practice of Honor, going out of our way to make our siblings of color feel seen today.
I hope you’ll give this practice a try. When you do, be on the lookout for how it feels inside. Will you havec a strong somatic reaction like me, or something else?
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As it says in the Book of Esther, this is a time when we remember a day when great sorrow turned to joy.
This practice offers us opportunity to take people in our community seriously. It can turn their sorrow of being invisible to the joy of being seen.
When we do so, we add another inch on the road to the World to Come.
What do you think? Comment below and let me know.
How do you know for sure if she was white or brown?There are no personal descriptions of her from people during her time.Either way,it doesn’t matter because she has been a symbol of strength and perseverance jews over the millenia.
Hi Peter – we don’t know. It is less likely that she was white because of where the story took place. It does matter because of the history of not seeing people of color, and the reality of not seeing Jews of color today. Why not use this opportunity to Honor her as a person of color?
I invite you to give the practice a try. If you feel weird about saying she was a person of color (like I did) it is an opportunity to ask yourself why
here is a response that came in by email to this post. If you are not sure why this practice is important, perhaps this can help.
“Thank you so much for being open for discussion of this topic. I am a Jewish woman of color. I attend a traditional Conservadox synagogue, I have to say, if it were not for the strong sense of self worth that I learned from the amazing women and men in my life (white, black and friends of many races) I would probably not be a member of my amazing Jewish community. I have first hand knowledge of the unfortunate and ugly stories of our sisters and brothers who are returning to the knowledge of who they are.
Yet, they are met with crude remarks and the most damaging comments after having conjured up the courage to visit a Shul, speak with a Rabbi, or trying to undergo the process of return. Even going into a Jewish gift store/bookshop can be a real trauma as in the case of a friend of mine who walked into an establishment to purchase and item and gave a departing greeting to the person behind the counter (It was the early hours of Friday before the coming of Shabbat) with “Shabbat Shalom”. That persons reply was a vitriolic “It is not Shabbat Shalom for you”.
It really touched my heart to read the story of the little boy listening to the Purim story. I thought, after all the years I had to deal with my daughter growing up in a community that was Ashkenazi with a few people that looked like her, not much has changed. What can we do? Keep working at
sending the message that “We don’t want to be noticed for our color.” We want to be welcomed as people with open arms.”
thank you for sharing these insights. I’ve often had these discussions with Jewish and Christian friends alike. My assumption, even as a white, Christian who has spent most of my life in and around Atlanta, Georgia , is that most biblical people would have been people of color. It seems reasonable to me that the original inhabitants of the geographical regions of biblical times were people of color. Add to the strong customs of marrying within your own ethnic groups to keep inheritance lines pure. Of course there were people
who intermingled, but that seems to be more of the exception rather than the standard practice.
Thank you for your most excellent article on how we should all be inclusive and not assume we know the beliefs or even the heart of someone simply by seeing their outward appearance.
You are very welcome Mary Elizabeth. I’m sorry I missed this comment for more than a year.
I just happened to come across this as I was reading the story of Esther and wondered about the skin color of Persians during that time. If it was dark then Esther had to be of dark skin as well because no one knew that she was a Jew until she revealed it to the king. Thank you for this article and beautiful revelation.
You are very welcome Tica.
Thank you for this wonderful article. We, as African Americans have Always known that many, many people in the Bible were POC, some even with brown or black skin. As Christians we were taught that Jesus the Christ was a white man with blond/brown hair, with pictures covering the church walls. But, because of the fact of where he was born and lived, we Always knew that He was a Black person or POC. For example, Miriam, Moses and Aaron were all born to their mother, Jocebed while living in Egypt, Africa. When the King of Egypt told the midwives to kill the new born sons of Hewbrew women. However, Moses was saved because the midwives feared God, more than the King of Egypt. Later, when Moses married the Ethiopian (Cushite) woman, who had darker skin, Miriam and Aaron had a problem with it . Numbers 12:1-2 And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them. Numbers12:9-10, and behold Miriam became leprous, white as snow. In essence God turned her into an Albino, We know her skin was black because she was the sister of Moses, who was mistaken for an Egyptian by the Midianite girls(Exodus 2:19) There are so many women in the Bible who were Black: Hagar, Tamar, Miriam, Zipporah, Bathsheba, Jezebel, the Queen of Sheba, Mary Magdalene to name a few. If you would like to know more about this read books by Dante Fortson, Lesser Known People of the Bible, Volume 1, and Black Women of the Bible. Thank you for your article, I hope more people read it.
You are very welcome Bree. Thank you for sharing your experience and the resources for us to learn more.
Good information for our people so we need to dissect the Bible for truth about our people.
Good point, thank you Micah