Thoughts on Ta’anit/Tanis Ester

We’re nearing the end of Ta’anit Ester/Tanis Ester. For close to 20 years, I’ve derived meaning from this fast by focusing on genocide around the world — those that were thwarted, like in the megila, and those that weren’t. This year, I wish I had something profound or insightful to say about the current situation.

I’m not interested in the semantic debate of whether what’s happening is deliberate genocide, but I am continually horrified (though not surprised) by what’s happening. Many leftist Jews are thinking about the parallels between the end of the megila and now — Jews experiencing an attempted genocide and responding with revenge-fueled mass slaughter. Maybe that’s interesting, maybe it’s not. Maybe that’s accurate, maybe it’s not.

But I will share what Lexie Botzum wrote: that buying into nationalist and imperialist systems of safety can’t make anyone truly safe or truly free. Liberation can only come from eschewing those systems entirely.

True liberation, and true safety, lies not in destroying individual enemies, but in destroying the systems that cultivate their enmity and enable their violence. True liberation lies not in making oneself useful to empire, but dismantling empire. So long as we imagine our safety will come from slotting into structures of domination rather than undermining them, we will still be slaves to Ahasuerus. We cannot sing of freedom.