Tisha B’Av with Queen Esther

From Joseph Yahalom and Michael Sokoloff, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of the Sciences and Humanities, 1999), 174 (#27), lines 5-6.

For background on the traditions of penitential prayer in early Judaism, see the two volumes associated with the Penitential Prayer consultation section of the Society for Biblical Literature, Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney A. Werline (eds.), Seeking the Favor of God, vol 1: The Origins of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism; and vol. 2: The Development of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism (Atlanta: SBL, 2006 and 2007).

For more on this, see Aaron Koller’s TABS essay, “A More Religious Megillat Esther?“

That is, the King does not want to divide his kingdom into two separate—and thus rival—kingdoms, i.e., Persia and Judea.

 With thanks to David Steinberg for suggesting this text.

This custom is first attested in the Ma‘agale Tsedek commentary in the 16th century Venice machzor; see discussion in Eduard Birnbaum, “Musical Traditions for the Reading of the Megillah,” in Contributions to a Historical Study of Jewish Music, ed. Eric Werner (New York: Ktav, 1976), 91-103.

The two texts are Poems #27 (pp. 174-178) and #28 (pp. 178-180).  The poems in this volume were composed in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, between the fourth and seventh centuries.  The Yahalom-Sokoloff edition includes translations into modern Hebrew.

We do have parodies of laments among the Purim poems in the Yahalom-Sokoloff volume, notably the “mock” lament in the voice of Zeresh, the wife of Haman, over her ten sons (Yahalom and Sokoloff, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry, 196-200 [Poem #32]).

The closest analogy from within the JPA corpus is the Tisha b’Av kinah in Yahalom and Sokoloff, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry, 166-168 (#24).

That is, because of her incessant speech.

Yahalom-Sokoloff, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry, 178.

The term “constraint” (עקא) suggests the midrashic understanding of the name Egypt (מצריים) as “twin narrows”:  thus, the Exodus from Egypt is an escape from the confines of Egypt into the freedom of the Promised Land or life under God’s covenant.  The language of the specific phrase—“from constraint to freedom”—furthermore echoes the language of the Passover Haggadah, which in turn has its roots in the Mishnah:  “He brought us from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, and from mourning to festivity, and from thick darkness to great light, and from servitude to redemption, and let us say before Him: Hallelujah!”  (m. Pes. 10:5; this reading prefaces the recitation of the Hallel psalms.)

Yahalom-Sokoloff, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry, 180.

It is not clear that the community which originally received these Aramaic poems (sometime in the period between the 4th and 7th centuries CE) would have observed a Fast of Esther, as fasting on the 13th of Adar is first attested in Geonic responsa literature in the 8th century (in the She’iltot of R. Aha of Shabha).  It is nonetheless possible that some Jews in Late Antiquity–and even more so Jews who continued to use these poems liturgically in the 8th century and later–may have observed a fast, as a pietistic practice if not an obligation, rooted in interpretations of Est. 9:31.