Purim - Have You Made Art About It Yet? Purim Edition - Invoking Imagination by Rabbi Adina Allen

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A decree has been issued against the Jews living in Persia. Esther, Queen of Persia is secretly a Jew. She lives in the royal palace but is not to approach the king unless she is summoned. To break this rule is to risk her life. In the verse below, Mordechai (Esther’s uncle, also a Jew with a position of power in the palace) implores Esther to use what power she has to stop this decree. He warns her not to imagine that if she keeps silent that she will be kept safe just because she lives in the palace.

Questions:

• What does the phrase “do not imagine…” evoke for you?

  • Has anyone ever said this to you? If so, what effect did it have?

• The Hebrew word תְּדַמִּ֣י (t’dami) can mean “imagine” or “think.”

  • In what, if any, ways might the act of “thinking” be different from that of “imagining”?

• The Hebrew word בְנַפְשֵׁ֔ךְ (b’nafeshech) can mean “in your soul” so that the verse can be read “do not imagine in your soul.”

  • What might it mean to imagine something “in our soul”?

  • How, if at all, does this reading change your understanding of the verse?

From “Holy Imagination” by Rabbi Sarah Krinsky¹, Sefaria.org

Perhaps paradoxically, or likely perfectly intuitively, imagination seems to thrive just when it is needed most. When our senses and spirits are depleted, when the world we see is so far from the world for which we yearn, this is when we need somewhere to go. And imagination lets us go there - while not letting go of what it means to be here.

From The Prophetic Imagination, by Walter Brueggemann²

Imagination is a danger…keep conjuring and proposing alternatives to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one. Imagination is [often] the last way left to challenge the dominant reality.

Questions:

• How does our “senses and spirits” being depleted affect our ability to imagine?

• We have the ability to imagine anything -- futures we desire as well as those we fear.

  • What happens when we imagine in isolation versus when we imagine in community?

  • What might support us in “conjuring alternatives to the one the king wants to urge?”

• What kind of relationship do you have--and do you want to have--with your imagination

Notes:

¹Sarah Krinsky is associate rabbi at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C.

²Walter Brueggmann is an American protestant Biblical scholar and theologian.