RALEIGH, N.C. (RNS) — As the United States and Israel began pummeling Iran with airstrikes Saturday (Feb. 28), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered a biblical analogy to explain his motives for going to war.
“Twenty-five-hundred years ago, in ancient Persia, a tyrant rose against us with the very same goal, to utterly destroy our people,” Netanyahu said in a statement, referring to the story from the biblical Book of Esther, which takes place in Susa, or Shushan, then the capital of the ancient Persian empire, now Iran.
Then, as now, he said, “this evil regime will fall.”
It was a timely statement. Jews read the Book of Esther during the holiday of Purim, which begins Monday evening (March 2), recounting the heroine’s resilience and determination to save her people from the king’s evil adviser, Haman. Through the years, Jewish girls have dressed up as Esther during the boisterous holiday.
But Netanyahu was not the first to tie present-day battles to the Book of Esther. Since its inclusion in the Hebrew Bible, the story — only 10 chapters long — has been embraced in different ways and in different times by Jews and Christians around the world. An exhibit, “Esther in the Age of Rembrandt” — now on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh until Sunday — shows how the 17th-century Dutch looked to the Book of Esther for resonances with their own struggle for independence from Spanish rule.
The exhibit, featuring paintings, prints and drawings by Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn and other artists from the time, was first shown at New York City’s Jewish Museum last year and will open on a slightly smaller scale at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in August.
Jan Lievens, The Feast of Esther, circa 1625. (North Carolina Museum of Art)
Esther, in particular, became a popular subject in art, politics and literature of the time. Her actions in saving the Jewish people from annihilation echoed the Dutch nation’s triumphant efforts shaking off the yoke of Catholic Spain.
“The Dutch see a lot of equivalences between themselves and the Israelites of the Old Testament, but it’s Esther’s story that has kind of the deepest association,” said Michele Frederick, curator of European art at the North Carolina Museum of Art. “They elaborate on this in their political pamphlets where they equate it with the military actions with Esther and Mordecai’s victory over Haman.”
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The biblical Book of Esther tells the story of the Persian King Ahasuerus, who replaces his disobedient wife, Vashti, with a new queen, Esther, whom he chooses as part of a beauty pageant. Esther hides her Jewish identity, but when the king’s adviser, Haman, convinces the king to issue a decree to eradicate the Jewish people, Esther reveals her identity to the king, and he comes to regret issuing the decree. Outraged that his adviser tried to kill his wife’s people, the king orders Haman to be hanged, and the Jews slaughter their enemies.
There’s no evidence that the story of Esther as told in the Bible actually took place between the 6th and early 4th century BCE, said Carol Meyers, professor of religion emerita at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. It is usually understood as satire.
“It’s fiction, but its context is probably historical, although no one has successfully made a case for which Persian emperor might be represented by Ahasuerus,” she said.
The Book of Esther is only one of two books in the Hebrew Bible named after women. (The other is Ruth.) Other prominent Hebrew Bible heroines, such as Miriam, Moses’ sister, and Deborah, an Israelite judge, don’t get as much space devoted to them.
Rembrandt van Rijn, A Jewish Heroine [possibly Esther] from the Hebrew Bible, 1632–33. (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Purchased 1953, 6089)
Rembrandt’s portrait of Esther, from 1632 or 1633, is the centerpiece of the exhibit. Loaned from the National Gallery of Canada, it depicts a translucently fair-skinned Queen Esther in her chamber, with her chambermaid in the shadows combing her wavy red hair.
What’s distinctive about Rembrandt’s Esther is how Dutch she looks.
“This is a Dutch model, sitting in (Rembrandt’s) studio that he then translates as an Esther of his contemporary moment,” Frederick said. “She’s not idealized in any way; her features aren’t smoothed out. This is someone the viewer might have seen on the street.”
The exhibit came together more than four years ago, when a curator from the Jewish Museum in New York asked to loan a piece from the North Carolina museum’s collection, Jan Lieven’s 1625 painting, “The Feast of Esther.” The painting by the contemporary of Rembrandt’s — the two may have once shared a studio — portrays the dramatic moment when Esther accuses Haman of treachery against her people.
The North Carolina museum, which has a significant gallery of Jewish ceremonial art, decided to join forces with the Jewish Museum on the Esther exhibit, which also includes a wide collection of decorative Esther scrolls, called megillahs, pottery and illustrated books of Purim plays and parodies, called purimshpiels.
Visitors view “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt” exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, N.C. (Photo courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of Art)
At the end of the exhibit is a contemporary 1992 ink print by Fred Wilson that combines a Dutch engraving of Esther with an iconic photograph of Harriet Tubman, the U.S. abolitionist. Both women risked their lives to save their people, with Tubman helping enslaved people escape to freedom through the Underground Railroad.
“We wanted to keep the show mostly historically based in the age of Rembrandt, but we did want this window into the story through the contemporary lens,” Frederick said.
The exhibit, which closes March 8, was meant to end a few days after the celebration of Purim. Now fascination with the Book of Esther amid the renewed intrigue with Iran may give it a whole new contemporary spin.
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