As Jews around the world marked Purim last week roughly 2,800 years after the events it commemorates, it is worth asking whether the political lesson many Jews draw from the story still holds. The uncomfortable answer is that it does not.
Purim tells the story of salvation through proximity to power. In the fifth century BCE, in what is now Iran, the Persian King Achashverosh took a Jewish woman, Esther, as his bride. Her uncle Mordechai encouraged the marriage after recognizing what it represented: access.
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