Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Known: Vashti's Story

(I wrote this poem on the occasion of my synagogue sisterhood's Vashti's Banquet.  It references a number of biblical and midrashic sources, as well as commentaries, including modern, on Vashti and her story.)

 I am known
you know
from the pen of men.
Ink's indelibility
forever staining my name,
co-opted for the sake
of an agenda that was not my own.

I am known
you know
according to the Scroll
named after that other
more known
who replaced my throne
next to the king
whose desires I would not entertain.

I am known
you know
for my inaction,
condemned for my not doing.
Denied a voice, a verse,
a claim to my own fate,
to carve out
my own words.

My own story –
intoned by the voice of others -
no full due is credited me.
I am simplified,
lessened,
diminished,
made insignificant.


It is the will of the eunuch,
the ultimate powerless,
so threatened by me,
who writes and seals
my censored story's supposed end.

Not even my husband,
most powerful in the land,
schemed to punish me,
to banish me
from his kingdom.
Only remembering me
enough
to know his need for another,
better,
in his bed.

I am known
you know
this day
too.
Celebrated
in circles of sisters
who praise my refusal,
who elevate me,
coronate me
a new queen:
of self-determination,
an exemplar of justice pursuit,
and yet a victim
of my own untimely circumstances.
Still story known by names
I never claimed for myself.
Still victim,
Still used,
with others twisting,
diminishing my story and me
to simple straightforward
goodness
for their own purposes,
not mine.

My story, my name
not mentioned even 10 times,
in Esther’s scroll,
has echoed and beckoned for generations.
My story, my name
has been recorded
recounted, re-written,
for ages.

Midrashic ink flowing with the colors
of boiling blood and cool deep sea.
Did you know,
I am known
by the Babylonian rabbis
as a goat-tailed, scaly-skinned whore?
The symbol of their exile’s source,
So detesting of my rule,
my power, my story-
they imagined me a monster.[i]

Though not all
despised me so.
Did you know,
I am known 
by the rabbis of Israel
as a source for their pity?
They told of how their Mighty God
Watched over me, took me in,
saved me time and time again
from life’s cruelties and crushing force.

So listen as I tell you
that there is more to my story
beyond the twists and turns 
of one chapter of a scroll.
Not inactive or reactive,
but determined and willful.
Not pure evil or good
but dimensioned and full.
Not so easily fit or forced into
a simple, bowed up box.

So might you entertain my desire,
this new night of feting,
to tell you my story more full
than you could possibly know
so that you might
know me better?

You see I was the daughter
of a great Chaldean king,
whose own fate was sealed at a feast
when I was but a girl.
A chandelier cut from its chains
landing upon my father's brains
in front of my very eyes.
Chaos erupting in the drunken room
I found my way to the newly crowned king,
who pitied me, took me in,
married me to his own son,
the prince who would one day be king,
Ahashveirosh.[ii]

Entertain the fact that
I myself did entertain
my fellow unknowns
at a fete of women,
a grand banquet,
in the palace of non-other than the king himself.
And know that this celebration
was no proper ladies affair.
Said to rival the licentiousness of my own husband's desires
my fete was set in the innermost rooms of the castle,
just under the nose of the king and his men,
So brazen and emboldened was I.[iii]

But before you bedeck me
in ribbons and jewels,
call me "equality's champion,"
know too that in my chamber
I took great pleasure in demanding
my own maidservants, Jews as they were,
 serve me on their seventh day.
And I preferred them without their clothes,
only their trays and washbasins in hand.


Do not seem so surprised,
measure for measure[iv],
I never asked
to be your role model or revulsion,
Neither Beauty nor Mystique,
neither least or most desired queen.

Know this:
They will tell of my execution,
they will write of
the eunuch’s perverted desire
to have my head presented
and served
on a platter
at the seat of the king.
Some will speak of the king
strangling me himself
In his drunken rage,
Fires so burning inside.[v]
But they do not know,
No one does,
Where I abide.

The throne upon which I now sit
I whittled and carved myself
from craggy crystals, thorny roses,
And knotted roots from brush that grew
out of the Chaldean sands of my Babylonia.
For I sit enthroned
in the echoing halls
of the banished,
of the monster-ed,
of the simplified,
of the misunderstood.
Our stories left unfinished,
un-ended.
our fates un-written,
our red-ribbon hauntings,
our legends, our standings
not fully known
to any soul.

So dine and revel
this night
in my own banquet’s tribute,
but do me the honor
of judging me
for yourself.

Not by the story
you knew or
you wanted,
but by the fuller tale
that you now know.







[i] TB Megilah 12b
[ii] Ester Rabbah 3:5 and Midrash Panim Acherim B:1
[iii] TB Megilah 12a-b
[iv] ibid, Rashi
[v] Esther Rabbah 4:9, 12, Leviticus Rabbah 12:1