Trivia / Book of Esther

• Referenced by...: The planet Vashti in Star Trek: Picard is named after the Persian queen of this story.
• Word of Dante:
  • Rabbinic tradition says that Haman had the image of an idol embroidered on his robes so that he could force the Jews to bow to him and thus bow to the idol, breaking the Law, hence explaining Mordecai's persistent refusal to do so.
  • Some Midrashic traditions hold that Vashti wasn't an innocent victim in all this, but that she was a terrible person who imposed harsh work on her (mostly Jewish) servant girls even on the Sabbath and made them eat unkosher food. According to this tradition, she was vain, self-centered, and haughty, and the real reason she refused her husband's summons was not that she didn't want to parade naked before a bunch of drunk guys, but rather that she had been punished by an angel with some kind of embarrassing disfigurement, often said to be the sudden and unexplained growth of a penis. The text itself, however, supports none of this. The only "bad" thing she did in the text was to refuse her husband's summons, which was viewed as treason by her patriarchal society.
  • Another popular tradition is that Esther became a vegetarian as queen rather than eat non-kosher meat, particularly that she ate beans, peas, and seeds. This explains why vegetarian foods, particularly legume dishes, and hamantaschen filled with poppy seeds are a staple of Purim celebrations.

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