Ronna Burger on Reading Esther as a Philosopher (Rebroadcast)

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, as Jews celebrate the holiday of Purim, they’ll also study the book of Esther, named for the young queen whose Jewish identity was unknown to her husband—Persia's king—and his court. The book of Esther tells the story of how she and her cousin Mordechai outwitted the king's second-in-command, the vizier Haman, who sought to destroy the Persian Jews. Beloved among children and adults, the story has also been read by some as a manual for Jewish political survival in the Diaspora.

Ronna Burger of Tulane University, a professor of philosophy, also sees in Esther a commentary on the sources of human success: do humans accomplish their aims through sheer luck, divine help, or careful decision-making? In conversation with Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver, she walks through Esther, demonstrating how each of these elements—chance, providence, and prudence—emerge from the biblical text.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Back in 2022, I spoke with the Distinguished Professor of Classical Greek Philosophy,
0:13.4	Rana Berger, about her study of the Book of Esther. To commemorate Puran this year,
0:18.6	we are rebroadcasting that conversation in hopes that it stimulates curiosity and raises for you, as it did for me, subtle questions about the teaching of Esther.
0:29.8	Welcome to the Tickfoot podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. Here is, together with our original introduction, my 2022 discussion with the wonderful
0:39.3	Professor Berger.
0:42.9	Next week the Jewish people celebrate the holiday of Purim, which marks the salvation of
0:46.9	the ancient Persian-Jewish diaspora, and on which we study the book of Esther.
0:51.9	Esther, of course, was a young Jewish woman whose Jewish identity was
0:55.5	not known to the king and his court when she was elevated to become the queen in the capital of Shushan.
1:02.0	In the text that bears her name, we read of how she and her cousin, the courtier Mordecai,
1:08.0	strategize to outwit the wicked vizier Haman.
1:11.9	It's a beloved story, a favorite of children, but it's also a text of remarkable subtlety.
1:17.4	It's been read as a manual for the political operatives of Jewish exile.
1:22.1	Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.
1:25.3	My guest today is a distinguished professor of philosophy
1:29.0	and the author of penetrating analyses of Plato and Aristotle, Rana Berger of Tulane University.
1:34.9	In recent years, she's been turning her attention to the text of the Hebrew Bible,
1:39.3	where she asks questions similar to those she asks of the philosophical texts. She's been reading and interpreting through the course of her career. What determines the success of human endeavor? How do we know how to accomplish our purposes, whatever they are? Even if, as in the case of this book, our purpose is as grave as the salvation of our people when they are in the teeth of a murderous adversary targeted for genocide.
2:03.6	Do we need to be lucky because the world is governed by coincidence and contingency and chance?
2:09.6	Is there something or someone whose providential care steers the direction of human affairs?
2:15.6	Or is it within our ability to shape history ourselves
2:18.9	through our deeds, so that prudence is the science of success? Those are some of the animating
	...

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