This Week

This week at praxis...Passing

Then Esther spoke to Hathach and gave him a 
message for Mordecai, saying, "All the king's servants 
and the people of the king's provinces know 
that if any man or woman goes to the king 
inside the inner court without being called, 
there is but one law--all alike are to be put to death. 
Only if the king holds out the golden scepter to someone, 
may that person live. I myself have not been called 
to come in to the king for thirty days." 
When they told Mordecai what Esther had said, 
Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, 
"Do not think that in the king's palace you will 
escape any more than all the other Jews. 
For if you keep silence at such a time as this, 
relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews 
from another quarter, but you and your father's 
family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have 
come to royal dignity for just such a time as this."

So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. 
On the second day, as they were drinking wine, 
the king again said to Esther, "What is your petition, 
Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. 
And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, 
it shall be fulfilled." Then Queen Esther answered, 
"If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, 
let my life be given me--that is my petition--
and the lives of my people--that is my request. 
For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, 
to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold 
merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; 
but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king." 
Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, "Who is he, 
and where is he, who has presumed to do this?" Esther said, 
"A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!" Then Haman was 
terrified before the king and the queen.		
----Esther 4: 10-14, 7:1-6

 Esther...was raised by her relative Mordecai 
after her parents died.  She was a Jew is the city 
of Susa in the kingdom of Media and Persia, 
and because of her beauty she was conscripted 
into the royal harem.  She was crowned queen after 
she won the heart of King Ahasuerus, and she used 
her position to intercede for the lives of her people.  
Because of Queen Esther the Jews who were about to be 
destroyed won the right to defend themselves by 
killing those who would have killed them.  
Their victory gave rise to the feast of Purim.  
Its authorization as an annual holiday is 
attributed to Esther and Mordecai. 
----Miriam Therese Winter, WomanWitness
 

The word "pass" has two meanings in the black world.  
When someone says, "He passed," it does not usually 
mean that the person referred to has become 
assimilated with whites.  To pass is also to die.  
Even the best-educated blacks refer to death as 
"passing," the way lower-class whites will use 
the euphemism "passed away."  In other words, 
it is possible that light-skinned blacks who 
have disappeared to join the whites are 
considered as good as dead.				
---- Stephan Birmingham, Certain People:  America's Black Elite
 

The completeness of this transformation appalled me.  
It was unlike anything I had imagined.  
I became two men, the observing one and the one who panicked, 
who felt Negroid even into the depths of his entrails...
I had tampered with the mystery of existence 
and I had lost the sense of my own being.  
This is what devastated me.  
The Griffin that was had become invisible. 				
---- John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me

I didn't see anyone around.  I closed the window 
behind me and adopted a nonchalant demeanor, 
leaning my elbows on the rail, cocking one foot 
across the other, and pulling down my hat, 
as I had seen so many men do in my twenty-one years.  
And it was well that I did, because just then 
someone rounded the end of the deck and touched 
the brim of his own hat politely in my direction.  
I cleared my throat and nodded, but didn't alter 
my position.  He said, "Pleasant evening," and walked on.
I stood still as he passed.
I saw at once that as long as I was a man, 
I would be able to do whatever I wanted, 
and that I would have a taste of freedom 
such as no woman I had known...had ever had.
----The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, by Jane Smiley



Questions:


	Esther was able to save her people, the Jews, because the King loved her.  
	She had not told him she was Jewish before this threat.  
	Was she wrong to hide part of her identity from him?  
	Is it important to be able to pass as something/someone else sometimes?  When?
	In what ways do you pass as something other than what you are 
	(hiding your profession, age, gender, class, ethnicity, orientation, 
	religious affiliation?)
	When do we pass because we can, and when do we pass to do good, 
	and when do we pass to be safe?
	How costly is it to pass?  How costly was it for Esther, for Griffin?