Revenge porn by Esther

 Revenge porn usually means, in today’s vernacular, the vile and vindictive crime of using intimate images to harass and humiliate one’s ex. But that’s certainly not what The Forward had in mind with an article headlined “Jewish Revenge Porn.”

This 2009 piece by Karine Cohen-Dicker discusses Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglourious Basterds, in which a squad of Jewish-American soldiers roam late-World War II Europe doing “one thing, and one thing only: killing Nazis.” That includes scalping them and carving swastikas in their heads. This is not historical fact, nor even historical fiction, but historical fantasy, an orgy of Jewish revenge. The movie’s climax takes it further, as a young woman hiding her Jewish identity helps the Basterds burn down a movie theater filled with the Nazi elite — including the Führer himself. Spoilers for real life: the Holocaust is real, WWII is real, but none of this actually happened. However, this sort of revenge porn is about wish fulfillment; one of the few Jews in the cast, Eli Roth, called it “kosher porn,” and Roth is a man who knows about pornographic violence. For this film, Jeffrey Goldberg called Tarantino “Hollywood’s Jewish Avenger,” noting: “It is not an accident that it took a non-Jewish director to concoct this story of brutal Jewish revenge.”

Still, Tarantino did not invent the genre; we have a whole holiday modeled around the original epic of Jewish revenge porn, the Scroll of Esther. The historical record provides a setting and nothing more.

A copy of the text of the edict was to be issued as law in every province and made known to the people of every nationality so that the Jews would be ready on that day to avenge themselves on their enemies. (8:13)

And many people of other nationalities became Jews because fear of the Jews had seized them. (8:17)

No one could stand against them, because the people of all the other nationalities were afraid of them (9:2)

The climax, of course, is when Ahasuerus receives the casualty report on the 13th of Adar and asks Esther what else she could want. She replies (9:13): “Give the Jews in Susa permission to carry out this day’s edict tomorrow also, and let Haman’s ten sons be impaled on poles.” In other words, Jews will continue killing antisemites on the 14th — even though no one was ever allowed to attack Jews on that date!

As of a few years ago, I was still convinced that my fellow Jews, especially my fellow Orthodox Jews, understood that Esther was revenge porn. It wasn’t an ideal, but a twisted reflection of the exilic experience. After all, we were pretty ambivalent about Esther. The book’s proponents had to fight to get it into the canon, and the holiday emphasizes friendship, hospitality and charity. We spend the day of the war, 13 Adar, in fasting and repentance. We spend the day(s) of Purim obscuring and blurring the lines, whether its kids with their costumes or adults with their alcohol consumption.

This reflected our modern ethic, I thought. “Defense” was the IDF’s middle name, literally. In America and throughout the Diaspora, we championed inclusion, dialogue and opportunity. Now, I find my social media and my social interactions flooded with calls for violence, for glorifying the weapons of war, for hostility towards certain races, ethnicities and faiths. It’s profoundly disheartening.

You see, Esther may have written revenge porn, but even in its world, the Jews show restraint: the lives of women and children, of innocents on the other side are still sacrosanct and inviolable. Sadly, Esther’s lurid revenge fantasy may no longer be enough to satisfy us.

Nazi Party of Israel

 Maybe I’m overreacting. That’s what many of my friends say, and nearly all of my unfriends. Still, I can’t help but feel we’re a good ways down the road, and at the end of the track lies a Polish concentration camp.

Oh, sorry, Poland! I understand you made that phrase illegal. Actually, I thought it redounded to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s credit when he called you out on the brownwashing, if that’s the proper term for ignoring complicity with the Nazis.

But Poland passed the law anyway, and it won’t change Israel’s relationship with them. After all, we Israelis and Jews continue to make ourselves more and more comfortable with far-right nationalist parties, whether in Poland or Hungary or Austria. And it’s not just for Central or Eastern Europe anymore; a disturbing number of Jews and Israelis are cozying up to these sorts of… people, I guess, technically — in the UK, France, Germany, Holland.

Ahead of Netanyahu’s visit last year, Hungary’s billboards were overrun by anti-Soros ads. Well, it worked, because now Bibi is putting out the same Soros conspiracy theories about globalist Jewish conspiracies. Just put “liberal” in there somewhere, and it’s kosher. And people wonder where Yair gets it from.

But I’m an American citizen too, so I can’t ignore what’s going on there. The current president launched his foray into politics with a five-year fellowship in the racist ideology known as Birtherism, then launched his official campaign with an anti-Mexican rant, then picked a white nationalist to run his campaign. I know snowcons get offended when you point it out, but Steve Bannon, as chairman of Breitbart News, identified it as “the platform of the alt-right,” and Breitbart identified Richard Spencer as the head of the alt-right. Two plus two still equals four arms of a swastika.

Rebranding, of course, has always been key. Not Nazis, neo-Nazis. Not neo-Nazis, skinheads. Not skinheads, white nationalists. Not white nationalists, alt-right. Not alt-right, ethno-nationalist.

That last step is key. Because once it sounds kosher, Jews can buy it.  Unfortunately, many have already. Anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-social justice… mmm! We have now reached multicultural ethno-nationalsim. Jewish nationalists can join the party! Hey, why not Hindu nationalists too? (It’s not like that might ever backfire, right?)

So why did yesterday’s news bother me so much? Because we’ve now dispensed with the rebranding. Art Jones, card-carrying Nazi and Holocaust denier, is running unopposed as the Republican candidate for Illinois’s Third Congressional District. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, he is “a former leader of the American Nazi Party and now heads a group called the America First Committee.” America First, huh? Where have I heard that before?

It’s a safely Democratic district, they tell me. It doesn’t mean anything, they tell me. Former Sen. Norm Coleman, head of the Republican Jewish Coalition, declares:

I would hope there is a write-in candidate so he doesn’t get the nomination. If he does, his candidacy will be rejected by the Republican Party at every level-local, state and federal. His depraved values are not Republican values.

You would hope, Norm? Awesome. But if the balance of the House of Representatives were at stake, and Art Jones managed to rally his old Skokie marching buddies, would Norm tell us to vote D to keep a Holocaust-denier Nazi off of Capitol Hill? I wish I could be sure about that. I really do. After all, Norm proclaims depraved values are disqualifying. Say a child molester — that’s pretty depraved, right?

I am a citizen of both the United States and Israel, and its leaders have a lot in common — not biographically, not temperamentally, but ideologically. Recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? Fantastic. Embracing their daughters’ commitment to Orthodox Judaism? Charming. Failing to recognize the threat of Nazism, whatever we call it now? Alarming. Embracing those who espouse it? Terrifying.

I still hope I’m wrong. But I can’t shake the feeling that Israel may have a Nazi prime minister before it ever has an Arab one. And far too many of my fellow Jews and fellow Israelis seem to be cool with that.