Robert Wright picks up the story of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Purim gift to President Obama. Purim begins tonight at sundown, so on the one hand it might seem appropriate, but of course a more appropriate gift would be mishloach manot.
To be sure, Esther is a book of special significance for Jews this week and so was in that sense an appropriate gift. But it’s not as if diplomatic protocol demands that you give the President a religious text when visiting him. Had Netanyahu not been inclined to cast Persians in a bad light, he could have just given Obama, say, a paperweight or a nice fountain pen.
Of course, those things wouldn’t have had quite the same emotional impact on conservative American Jews and conservative American evangelicals as a Bible story that, by Netanyahu’s reading, depicts Iranians as eternal enemies. And I guess Netanyahu, like any politician, hates to miss an opportunity to reach his base. (In case word of his remarks to Obama didn’t reach them, Netanyahu mentioned Esther in his AIPAC speech last night, calling it the story of a “Persian anti-Semite [who] tried to annihilate the Jewish people.”)
The genius of using religious scripture for political purposes is its resistance to criticism. After all, in the week when the book of Esther figures in a sacred Jewish ritual, who would be foolish enough to challenge Netanyahu’s invocation of it?
Me, apparently.
Me, too. It’s simply not the thing you do on Purim, unless you’re trying to drive a deeper wedge between the president of the United States and a constituency who thinks he’s the anti-Esther, the one who would sit by and let a genocide happen. There are mitzvot Jews are supposed to fulfill on Purim. While listening to the Megillah being read is one of them, using it to provoke a war is not.
Joel Rosenberg, the messianic Jew who has been thirsting for some time for war with Iran, writes in an email to supporters:
[W]hat I appreciated most about the speech was Mr. Netanyahu drawing the AIPAC audience’s attention to the Biblical story of the Jewish Queen Esther, whose prayers and fasting moved the Lord to intervene to save the Jewish people from a Persian tyrant in ages past. Earlier in the day, Mr. Netanyahu gave a decorated copy of an Esther scroll as a gift to President Obama during their Oval Office meeting, and discussed the significance of the story with the President. What is not clear is whether the Prime Minister explained the ending of the story: Yes, Esther did her part, praying, fasting and intervening before the Persian king on behalf of the Jewish people. And yes, the Lord did his part in changing Ahasuerus’ heart, and putting the evil Haman on the gallows, and dramatically changing the dynamic in favor of the Jews. But it must be remembered that in the end, the Jewish people did have to fight against the Persian forces hell bent on their destruction, and with the Lord’s help the Jews miraculously prevailed.
Of course here Rosenberg leaves out a crucial part of the story, from his perspective: its role in the Second Coming of Christ. For that, let’s turn to a review of John Hagee, ca. 2006, meaning he’s been at this for quite some time:
On Purim, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the day Queen Esther saved the Jews from annihilation, Trinity Broadcasting Network’s flagship talk show, Praise the Lord, featured an appearance by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. A politically conservative Orthodox rabbi, Lapin is best known for crusading with the Christian right against anti-religion bigotry and, more recently, for his close association with the convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But he was not invited to a nationwide telecast to discuss such topics as the trumped-up war against religion or the better nature of his fallen friend. He had been asked to explain the significance of Purim to Christians, and particularly how the Old Testament’s Book of Esther “serves as a roadmap to reality,” which pinpoints where the next world “hot spot” will be.
That soon-to-be-flaming location is where the Book of Esther was set: namely Persia, or in modern parlance, Iran.
Seated beside Lapin in the ornately gilded Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) studio was Pastor John Hagee, the author of an incendiary new book purporting to show that the Bible predicts a military confrontation with Iran. By then, Hagee’s book, Jerusalem Countdown, had sold nearly 500,000 copies. It had occupied the No. 1 position on the Wal-Mart inspirational best-seller list, showed up on Wal-Mart’s list of top 10 best sellers for seven weeks, and made the USA Today top 50 best-seller list for six weeks.
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Esther is a favorite Old Testament figure of many evangelicals, a heroine who saved her people from a genocidal plot masterminded by the evil vizier Haman through her influence as the wife of the King of Persia. When she and her cousin Mordecai discussed whether she should risk death by intervening with the king, he encouraged her by suggesting that she had a divine role; perhaps she had come to the kingdom, he said, for such a time as this. Evangelicals often invoke that phrase to elevate the relevance of modern-day figures. In 2004, Laura Bush repeated a story about a woman she met on the campaign trail who told her that the President was born for such a time as this. In a recent message sent by e-mail to CUFI supporters, Hagee wrote that his organization is exactly in the position of Esther. Israel is in a time of crisis. A 21st-century Hitler (the president of Iran) has put in place a plan to exterminate the Jews with nuclear warfare. If we remain completely silent at this time, God’s punishment will come to us also.
Hagee doesn’t fear a nuclear conflagration, but rather God’s wrath for standing by as Iran executes its supposed plot to destroy Israel. A nuclear confrontation between America and Iran, which he says is foretold in the Book of Jeremiah, will not lead to the end of the world, but rather to God’s renewal of the Garden of Eden. But he also reveals that he is ultimately less concerned with the fate of Israel or the Jews than with a theocratic Christian right agenda. When Jesus returns for his millennial reign, the righteous are going to rule the nations of the earth. When Jesus Christ comes back, he’s not going to ask the ACLU if it’s alright to pray, he’s not going to ask the churches if they can ordain pedophile bishops and priests, he’s not going to ask if it’s all right to put the Ten Commandments in the statehouses, he’s not going to endorse abortion, he’s going to run the world by the word of God and the world will never end. It’s going to become a Garden of Eden, and Christ is going to rule it.
No doubt Netanyahu wants someone more pliable in the White House, and he’s got friends here who want to help him do it. After the Israeli leader met with the American president, Hagee’s organization, Christians United for Israel, emailed members urging them to sign a letter of support to Netanyahu. “Next week, we’re flying to Jerusalem to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu. . . . When we present this letter, we want to tell the Prime Minister that it was signed by many thousands of Christians from across the country. At this difficult and dangerous juncture, let’s make sure that the Prime Minister knows he’s not alone.“
