A Highly Important Decorated Esther Scroll, Venice: 1654 Scribe: Estellina daughter of Menahem

Estellina daughter of Menachem!

*Jen waves at Estellina across the centuries*

If you've got a very good imagination, you might be able to picture how happy I was when this Sotheby's catalogue arrived in my email (thanks, Lipman and PR). You don't need any imagination at all to understand why, though.

The other deeply pleasing dimension of this particular scroll is that there are no known complete decorated Esther scrolls predating this one. There are fragments, but no complete ones.

Here's a section from the catalogue text (page 272):

The present scroll is extraordinary on several accounts, first and foremost in its pride of place as the earliest complete decorated megillah. As attested to by the dated colophon at the conclusion of the text, the scroll was completed on Tuesday, 3 Adar, 5324 [= 15 February, 1564] in the city of Venice. The colophon however reveals an even more remarkable feature the individual who wrote this scroll was a woman, Estellina daughter of the Katzin Menahem, son of the Rosh Katzin Jekutiel. Estellina was clearly a member of a wealthy and eminent family indicated not only by the titles accorded to her father and grandfather (both Katzin and Rosh Katzin denote distinguished official positions within the Jewish community) but also by the presence of a coat of arms painted onto the scroll directly after her colophon. Prominently displayed in an elaborate gold frame festooned with flowing ribbons and occupying an entire column, the coat of arms consists of a gold crown above another image that is difficult to decipher, as the paint has been abraded.

As well as being "[t]he earliest complete decorated Esther Scroll," the cataloge describes it as "[t]he only known Esther Scroll to have been written by a woman in the pre-modern era."

I'm writing to Sotheby's to ask if I might be allowed to see it in person, even though there's no chance of my buying it ($600,000 to $800,000, says the catalogue. Hollow laughter). Given that I'm among the first of her successors, and all that.

I wonder who taught Estellina halakha. I wonder if her mother was cross with her for writing a Megillah instead of doing ladylike things such as embroidery. I wonder if she read from it.

I'm so glad to have met her!

The Megillah never explicitly references God, and since it's a biblical book, people at various times have found this a tad problematic.

I mentioned last week that the practice of starting each column with the word HaMelekh - The King - is perhaps a nod heavenwards, as it were, given the allegorical representation of God as King.

Another custom you sometimes see is the enlarging of certain letters such that the four-letter Name of God stands out, thus:

ותאמר אסתר אם על המלך טוב יבוא המלך והמן היום אל המשתה אשר עשיתי לו

This is the only place you get it in consecutive words (chapter 5). I've never looked for it happening in different places - non-consecutive words, or line heads, or column heads - I don't have access to that many manuscripts. Anyone want to pitch in with info?

I strongly suspect that what came first was some scribe noticing "Hey, cool..." and subsequently us getting all serious about it. Compare some of the liturgical poems wherein the name of the poet is spelled out by the first letters of the verses - that's either arrogant beyond belief, or it's playful (or something else that I don't know about but Gabriel does and if that's so I'd be obliged if he'd say so in the comments), and I don't know about you but I'd rather assume it was playful.

Making letters big is different from tweaking the column heads - big and small letters carry more significance, generally, than column heads. So tweaking the text so that the column heads are all HaMelekh - or HaMalka - is fine so long as you don't mangle the columns, but making letters big and small is more dicey - easy enough, but significant enough that one shouldn't do it unless one has a tradition of doing it. So spelling out yud-hey-vav-hey in enlarged letters is one thing, but doing, say, חמה ויתאפק המן for someone called Hava would be Pretty Darn Dodgy. There's fun, and then there's taking it too far, you know? Spelling one's name in a poem is less dodgy than spelling it out in a sacred scroll. Anyway, point being, we have fun with letters and words and layout, within the bounds of good taste, and I bet the fun came first and the Serious Interpretations after, with the yud-hey-vav-hey and the HaMelekh both.

Talking of fun. Another large letter in the Megillah. You see the similarity here? A happy accident.

I had the best time this evening. You know HaMelekh megillot, right? Esther scrolls which tweak the layout such that each column starts with the word HaMelekh, which means The King.

So R' Katz at CSAIR mentioned that he'd been thinking about a HaMalka (The Queen) megillah and fiddling about with it and only getting partway...

...and I, being a Total Nerd with Mad Leet Computer Tikkun Skillz, decided to give it a shot. And I did it. HaMalka megillah, looking pretty sweet.

Of course, the thing about HaMelekh is that King is allegorical for God, and since there isn't any God in the Megillah, the HaMelekh is a compensatory move. HaMalka obviously takes away from that, so if you are doing HaMalka you have to read it as riffing on the HaMelekh/God theme, rather than as a Stomping Feminist theme.

I suspect most people would assume it was a Stomping Feminist thing ("You changed HaMelekh? Don't you realise that HaMelekh refers to God?! Sheesh, you indulge your ridiculous ignorant feminism and just make yourself look stupid..."). One would get tired of explaining that no, one is very well aware of HaMelekh, and HaMalka retains the concept of sovereignty with its hints of God but adds a feminine aspect, as to say "My relationship with God is informed by my being female, and I can engage with ritual on that basis, and it is kosher and it is joyous."

You see I think people might not understand that. It makes me wonder whether alternating Melekh and Malka on the column heads would be a better move, but on the whole I think the feminine riff is worth it.

or, Why I Like Hanukah More Than Purim.

Because parading your wife in public as a sex object isn't funny.
Because getting mad when your wife doesn't want to comply isn't funny.
Because governmental fearmongering with wild speculations about women isn't funny.
Because turfing out your wife in a fit of pique isn't funny.
Because government legitimising intimidation in domestic relationships isn't funny.
Because abduction isn't funny.
Because fetishising virgins isn't funny.
Because rape isn't funny.
Because imprisonment in a harem isn't funny.
Because your husband being allowed to kill you isn't funny.

Don't tell me I'm wrong in reacting to the text in a way that disturbs you.

Don't tell me I'm reading it wrong.
Don't tell me what the Midrash says.
Don't tell me to lighten up.
Don't tell me it's all just a joke.
Don't tell me it's parody.
Don't tell me that if I read it like you read it I wouldn't get upset.



Comments will be screened. Comments failing to understand the above will not be passed.

ETA: For instance, "Did you not notice that none of these things you complain of are supposed to be good or wise?" is telling me I'm reading it wrong. FAIL. Yes, I did notice. Pipe down and think.

Halakha geek props to WF, who did Purim twice, once outside Jerusalem and once inside. Way to go.

Women are allowed to chant the Scroll of Esther on behalf of men if no competent men are available, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Israel's Sephardi community, ruled in a landmark decision liable to outrage many of his Ashkenazi counterparts.

From Vos Iz Neias, or Haaretz, and loads of people emailing me.

Let's start with how this isn't a landmark decision.

The above is roughly akin to saying "Prisoners should not be detained unlawfully, Democrats ruled today, in a landmark decision liable to outrage many of their Republican counterparts." It's not exactly an innovation. A lot of people have been doing it that way for quite some time, left-wing Orthodox Ashkenazim as well as the liberal movements, so it doesn't really count as "landmark." It also wasn't a "decision," in that he's been saying and teaching that way for some time, in line with quite a lot of rabbinic Judaism over the past couple of millennia. And he didn't "rule," it just came up in a class on the laws of Megillah reading. So, less of the sensationalism.

What is interesting is that suddenly people felt the need to make a big deal out of it. For some reason, the idea that women might read for men has become interesting enough to make headlines. Why should this be?

It's possible that it's part of "Who Owns Judaism?" - it made the news because the ultra-Orthodox said it. Basically all Jewish movements, from centre-right Orthodoxy and leftwards, look to the ultra-Orthodox for authenticity. So it doesn't matter that other flavours of Jew have had women reading Megillah for simply ages; it's only news when the ultra-Orthodox talk about it. Perhaps that's what's going on; if so, it's a great pity.

A tangent: It's a pity for what it shows about how other Jewish movements think about Judaism, perpetually looking over their shoulders measuring themselves against the ultra-Orthodox. Other kinds of Jews don't want to be ultra-Orthodox for a great many reasons, but there is the unfortunate tendency to assume, deep down, that it is basically laziness - that if we were just a bit more prepared to deal with discomfort, we too could be like that. This results in an unspoken but evident assumption that only ultra-Orthodox Judaism is the "real" Judaism, that only the ultra-Orthodox do it "properly," and the necessary corollary that if we're in another movement, there's no point committing to it with our whole heart, if it's just inauthentic toy Judaism.

Moderate Americans don't secretly feel that only hard-line Republicans are the "real Americans," do they? (I really hope they don't, anyway). With notable exceptions, Americans seem to manage the idea that first and foremost you're an American, and you can have political affiliations, and that different political groups are more or less equally valid. Democrats don't go around more or less identifying as Republicans who can't be bothered to do it properly, but an awful lot of liberal Jewish movements have an undertone of being lapsed Orthodox. Either this is a great shame and the liberal movements need a lot more self-confidence, or it is evidence that ultra-Orthodoxy is the only true Judaism. Speaking for the liberal movements (what hutzpah) it's our choice. End tangent.

It's also possible that women-reading-Megillah made the news this particular year because the concept of women participating in things has risen in the public consciousness enough that it's now something people are ready to think about.

Over the past - I don't know, decade? couple of decades? - women's participation in this sort of thing has been increasing. It's now easier for Orthodox women to learn how to read Megillah, and it's a good deal more acceptable these days for women to have women's Megillah readings, for instance. As long as women participating was strictly a non-Orthodox thing, the Orthodox world could comfortably ignore it, writing off the non-Orthodox practices as not really Judaism, but perhaps once it's made its way into the left wing of the Orthodox world it's harder for the right wing to ignore? In other words, perhaps this is creeping feminism crossing a threshold?

So the idea that women might participate in ritual a little more, in the form of a comment about women reading megillah, may have crept into the Sephardi real-world setup. Having crept into the ultra-Sephardi world doesn't mean it's crept into the ultra-Ashkenazi world - doesn't mean it hasn't at all, just evidently less so - which means that the looking-over-their-shoulders-at-the-ultra-Orthodox Jews can't feel authentic about involving women yet. But that's okay, because they ought to be acting on conviction anyway.

In any case, such events are pieces of evidence that even ultra-Orthodoxy is influenced by ideas percolating in the rest of the world, which itself is evidence that exchange of ideas goes both ways, into ultra-Orthodoxy as well as out of it. That is, there is not one true Judaism and a host of lesser Judaisms, but many symbiotic Judaisms.

R' Yosef, being Sephardi, might possibly agree.

But possibly not.

On to part 2

A new twist on the traditional Purim cookie: fortune hamentaschen. They look like hamentaschen, but they taste good and they have fortunes inside, instead of prunes.

Here's how.

For fortunes, I used Yiddish proverbs - they have the perfect blend of wry humour, cynicism, and Jewishness. Selections from Pirkei Avot (early rabbinic homiletics) could also work, but I found them a bit too goody-goody for this purpose. One could also use verses from Proverbs and suchlike, but I felt a bit odd about putting biblical verses into cookies. Choose fortunes, print them out, and fold the fortunes into little squares.

Then use this recipe and these associated tips to make fortune cookies. When you get to the bit about shaping them, depart from those instructions, and instead, when you get the cookie off the baking tray and flip it over, put a folded fortune in the middle and pinch the edges up to make three corners.

Wondering about the midrash on Esther, as well.

At the beginning of the story, the king sends for Queen Vashti to show her off to his mates. And she says she's not coming, whereupon everyone gets into a gigantic tizzy lest it get about that Vashti got away with saying no to her husband, and they dethrone her and all sorts of nasty things, and generally overreact.

Which you can read as being tremendously misogynist, if you like. Or you can be a bit more subtle and read it as satire - the megillah poking fun at people who overreact when their wives don't do as they say.

The midrash, somewhat later, goes to great lengths to explain exactly why Vashti deserved everything she got. It says she was a slut, she was rude to the king and humiliated him in front of his friends, she made Jewish girls work on Shabbat with no clothes, etc.

So if you read the story in light of the midrash, people's reaction to Vashti saying no is totally proportionate.

Why is the midrash so invested in doing this? Does it take the first reading above and have problems with the idea that the biblical characters are overreacting? Does it take the second reading and just not get the idea of satire, or not accept that the Bible can do satire if it wants? Or what? I'm intrigued.

ETA: livredor points out that what the midrash is doing is emphasising a doctrine of just reward and punishment, which is something the midrash rather likes doing - in part because the midrash is often directed at communities in exile who are rather miserable and need to be able to pin their hopes on something - so what it's doing makes sense in its own context. Good.

She also points out that in midrashic parables, a king often represents God. Accordingly, stories where kings do unjust and rotten things are sort of disturbing. So if the king appears rotten and unjust, the midrash-influenced reader is going to feel like it's God being rotten and unjust, and the midrash is going to want to address that, by providing extra background which makes the king/God appear perfectly reasonable. This also makes sense.

If you're thinking of going as Tefillin Barbie this Purim

Please don't use real tefillin.

If you were going as a Torah reader, you wouldn't use a real Torah. Torahs are holy objects. Tefillin are also holy objects.

Please, if you're dressing up as someone wearing tefillin, make some fake tefillin with some cardboard, black paint, and ribbon.

This year's crop of Megillahs has been harvested and sent to the happy recipients. This makes seven Megillot since I wrote my first for Purim 2004.

In the academic year 2003-4 I was in Israel, learning at Pardes. In my spare time, I continued to study the laws of sofrut - as my learning skills improved courtesy of Pardes, I was able to make better progress with this - and eventually I felt ready to attempt the Megillah.

The Megillah is a traditional starting point for new scribes. It's not too long, and it doesn't contain any of the Names of God. Thus, it's pretty hard to make any really terrible mistakes, and the baby scribe can get through the project in a manageable sort of time.

You can study theory all you want, but if you can't get hold of materials, and you wouldn't know how to use them if you did, you're a bit stuck. Fortunately for me, since there are opinions which say a woman may write Esther, a sofer who teaches at Pardes was willing to help me write it. He would get materials for me, and show me how to use them. That was a courageous thing for him to do, because in giving me those skills he would be helping me along the road to writing sifrei Torah, tefillin and mezuzot, which is something he could not condone. Many people would say that he should not give me a tool to do something permitted if there were to be a chance of my using it for something forbidden. He gave me the tool and let me choose what to do with it, and I thank him for that.

That year, there was an earthquake in Israel. I was in Pardes' study hall that morning, writing away, but I stopped writing when the building rocked and the room started wobbling up and down. For a second we thought it was a bomb, but bombs don't make the floor ripple. Pardes has a very diverse community; you could tell the Californians, because they dived underneath their desks. The rest of us sat there gaping until the room came to a standstill. People came over to me, asking "How's the Megillah?" It was fine.

I finished the writing, and took it to the sofer. He looked at it. I waited. "It's a very good first Megillah," he said. At three years' distance, I see just what he meant. Still, it was nice enough, I was proud of it, he was satisfied. I think I was his first female student to complete a Megillah.

I took it to Rabbi Landes, the top bod at Pardes. I asked him: can we read from a Megillah I've written? He looked at me from behind his beard. Had I already written it, he asked. Yes? He would need some time to think about this. Give him a few days. He had to decide whether it was okay, in principle and in particular.

Pardes does things by the book. It's not an Orthodox institution, but it's an institution Orthodox people can be part of. That means when it does something, it does it properly. R' Landes riffled through some enormous tomes and decided that in principle, he was okay with reading from my Megillah, but - but - if I hadn't written it properly, Pardes' reading would be completely invalid. So he talked to my sofer. Was this a kosher Megillah? I wasn't in on that conversation, but the answer must have been yes, because R' Landes hunted me down and said the Pardes reading for that year would be from my Megillah.

I was over the moon. My work had been weighed in the balance and found worthy. It could be used to fulfil the mitzvah of Megillah reading for the yeshiva.

A decision like that isn't taken lightly. The Megillah reading fulfils the obligation of an awful lot of people; someone co-ordinating a reading has a responsibility to the whole congregation to make the reading kosher. Approving my Megillah meant that serious people with heavy responsibilities were satisfied with my grasp of the scribal arts to the extent that they would trust the reading - the fulfilment of everyone's obligation - to my scroll.

That was when I felt I'd graduated. For sure I still had a long way to go - still do - but I was over the bar of being minimally competent.

So I kept studying!