Jewish Life Digital Edition February 2014 | Page 15

This is how it seems, of course, if we don’t
commit ourselves to penetrating the surface. Esther was a master at breaking
through the walls that surround us. This
was her weapon that she had taught herself
in her years of solitude and yearning.
Esther had learned to see G-d wherever
she looked. She saw Him as her only parent
and she let His presence be her guide.
We all have our empty places. Rather than
allowing them to lead us towards embitterment, let us use them as a ladder.

LIKE A MYRTEL
Esther had an additional name – Hadassah.
The Hebrew word ‘hadassah’ means ‘myrtle’,
and it is one of the four species that we use
on Sukkot. The etrog (citron) is shaped like
and symbolises the heart, the lulav (palm
branch) the spine, the aravah (willow) the
lips, and the hadassah are the eyes. Esther’s
eyes could see inner reality as clearly as our
eyes see external reality.
Her name was not random, but rather it
was the ultimate description of her strongest quality.

Let us look into the nature of the hadassah more closely to gain insight into Esther’s nature, and ultimately, into our own.
The leaves of the myrtle are uniform and
green. If I was to name a child after a plant
(which is highly unlikely), I would gravitate
more to Rose, Lily – or at worst, Daisy – long
before I would call anyone Myrtle or Hadassah.
It is almost a command to aspire to inconspicuous mediocrity!
But the Maharal points out that her modest image embodied an internal strength.
The image that Esther projected was one in
which the superficial separations that polarise us played no part.
The greater our focus on the uniqueness
of our external identities (age, appearance,
culture), the more separate we are from the
unity and commonality of our internal identities (the need to love, the yearning for
meaning and genuine achievement, fear of
rejection and inner chaos). We become the
children of one Father when we let ourselves see beyond the façade of superficial
identity. It is our quiet commonality that
bonds our hearts and minds.

HER NAME
WAS NOT
RANDOM, BUT
RATHER IT WAS
THE ULTIMATE
DESCRIPTION OF
HER STRONGEST
QUALITY.

The Talmud gives us a concrete example:
Esther was given seven maidservants, as
was the court custom. In order to remember
when it was Shabbat, she named them after
the days of the week. In a society as stratified as ancient Persia, she could have easily
dehumanised them by calling them Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. Nothing could be
a greater insult to their human value.
So, instead, she named them after G-d’s
order of Creation. One was Light, the other
Transcendence, etc. They all ultimately
converted to Judaism, even though that
was far from Esther’s intent. By becoming
more aware of whom they really were, they
were able to set their sights towards who
they wanted to be. She succeeded in bringing them to a genuine awareness of their
inner essence.

COOLNESS AND WARMTH
The Talmud rather cryptically tells us that
Esther, like the hadassah, was ‘green’. This
does not mean that one would mistake her
for Robin Hood or Lyle the Crocodile.
Rather, her essence was symbolised by the
colour green.
Green is a colour that is made up of two primary components – blue and yellow. Blue symbolises coolness and yellow symbolises warmth.
Esther’s inner light was a composite of
two forces as well – fiery sun-like passion
and the cooling nurture of water. Because
she had developed her own spiritual nature
so completely, she could reach out to anyone
and find within her the capacity to connect.
Her ‘greenness’ was the spiritual symbol of
humility, responsivenes ́