Exploring religious tolerance through the heroines of Purim

10.03.2012                      16.Adar. 5772                      Ki Tisa

Geschichte:

Exploring religious tolerance through the heroines of Purim

When he saw how a young female pupil in the Venice ghetto became prey to a Christian missionary of literary prowess, Rabbi Leon Modena responded with his own allegorical creation about Esther and Vashti.

"It is something new to me that a young woman fell so much in love with a poem dealing with great things that she could not refrain from writing to the author of that poem," wrote Ansaldo Ceba, an elderly Catholic poet from Genoa to Sara Copio Sullam, a young Jewish poet from Venice. That was on May 19, 1618. The poem in question is "La Reina Ester," a long heroic poem written by Ceba (1563-1623 ), which was published twice, in 1615 and in 1617. Among Christians, the poem was greeted with indifference but in the literary circle frequented by Sara Copio Sullam (1592-1641 ) in the Venice ghetto, Ceba's "Queen Esther" was accorded a royal welcome.
By the 16th century, many writers – Catholics and Protestants, Jews and crypto-Jews – were writing about the heroine of the Purim tale. During the period when royal courts flourished, Esther was perceived as a woman who knew how to survive even as the court around her was enveloped in intrigue. However, that was not why Copio Sullam admired the character of Esther….