This Purim, let’s take a moment to appreciate one of the great reputational rehabilitations in my Jewish lifetime: Queen Vashti. We know how the story goes: King Ahashuerus, partying with his friends ...

Call it the “Esther/Vashti Complex” — the perennial Purim impulse to define Esther and Vashti against each other as foils, opposites, rivals, or enemies. They were none of these. This false dichotomy ...

One queen is summoned by the king and refuses to come. The next queen competes in a beauty pageant and saves her people. Vashti and Esther are two of the rare female protagonists in Tanakh. The two ...

This Purim, I am thinking about female leaders from the past and present. Two stories. Two different time periods. One states, “…every man should wield authority in his own home.” If other women feel ...

Consider the book of Esther in the Bible’s Old Testament where the story of two women is expounded in the early chapters: Queen Vashti and Esther. Vashti was a queen married to King Xerxes, and as a ...

Although Vashti and Esther never meet, the relationship between them is integral to understanding the events of Megillat Esther. Vashti disappears by the end of the first chapter, but she casts a long ...

Queen Vashti refuses to obey King Achashverosh's command to attend a banquet to display her beauty.(Culture Club/Getty Images) Purim was probably my favourite day of the year at my Jewish day school.

Trigger warning: This article includes a discussion of sexual violence and abuse, so contains material that some might find upsetting. By the end of the Book of Esther, Queen Esther is a national ...

In the Purim story as told in the Book of Esther, Vashti was ordered to show off her beauty to the king and his drunken pals (meaning, apparently, that she would be naked). She refused. The king’s ...

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