{"id":51722,"date":"2019-03-20T13:08:05","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T11:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=51722"},"modified":"2019-03-20T13:08:05","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T11:08:05","slug":"mordecai-the-motherly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/mordecai-the-motherly\/","title":{"rendered":"Mordecai The Motherly"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cRabbi Yudan said: On one occasion Mordecai\u2026could not find a wet-nurse for Esther, so he himself breastfed her. Rabbi Berekiah, Rabbi Abbahu in the name of Rabbi Eleazar: Milk came to him and he would breastfeed her. When Rabbi Abbahu preached this in public, the public laughed. He said to them: But is it not stated in the Mishnah [Makhshirin 6:7]? \u2013 Rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar said: The milk of a male is tahor (\u201cpure\u201d) [Bereshit Rabbah 30:8].<\/span><\/p>\n

What might have stimulated the Rabbinic midrashic imagination to create such a seemingly extraordinary tradition as Mordecai having breastfed baby Esther? It seems that this aggadic tradition is somehow linked to an underlying midrash on the verses in Esther, Chapter 2. After detailing Mordecai\u2019s genealogy, we are told: \u201cAnd he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle’s daughter; for she had neither father nor mother\u2026\u201d (Esther 2:7). The first Hebrew words of this verse \u201cVa-yehi \u2018omen \u2018et Hadassah\u201d are correctly understood in context to mean that Mordecai \u201cadopted\u201d Esther\/Hadassah as an infant and raised her until her marriage to King Ahasuerus. <\/span><\/p>\n

But elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, the verb \u201c\u2018omen\u201d seems clearly to refer to breastfeeding (see for example, Numbers 11:11-12, Ruth 4:16). It seems possible that some imaginative darshan read the two words \u201c\u2019omen et- \u201cas one word \u201c\u2019omenet\u201d (i.e. feminine, singular present-participle), in effect \u201cfeminizing\u201d Mordecai by suggesting midrashically that he himself nursed the infant orphan Esther. An additional possibility is that the rather convoluted description of Esther\u2019s family relation to Mordecai, \u201cbat-dodo\u201d, indicating that Esther was \u201chis uncle\u2019s daughter\u201d was midrashically reread \u201cbat-dado\u201d, i.e. \u201cthe daughter of his breast\u201d suggesting that Esther nursed at Mordecai\u2019s male (!) breast. When this admittedly outlandish idea was preached in a public sermon, the unlearned congregation quite understandably laughed. <\/span><\/p>\n

But our Rabbinic darshan had a learned \u201ccome-back\u201d — that \u201cmale milk\u201d (halav ha-zakhar) is sufficiently real to be mentioned in the core text of Rabbinic Judaism, the Mishnah. Significantly, in confirmation of the \u201cmiracle\u201d of \u201cmale milk\u201d, the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 53b) relates the story of a recently widowed man who could not afford a wet-nurse for his infant child. And so, \u201cmiraculously his breasts opened like the two breasts of a woman and he breastfed his son\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Remarkably, \u201cmale milk\u201d, which the Rabbinic Sages and others in pre-modern times regarded as \u201cmiraculous\u201d, has been shown in our day to be an albeit rare medical reality. So, the question arises: Should we regard this brief midrashic narrative as early evidence of the later custom of humorous \u201cPurim-Torah\u201d? Or might the Rabbinic tradition that Mordecai breastfed Esther be best regarded as a parade example of the wonderfully creative midrashic imagination of our ancient Sages?<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

image:\u00a0<\/span>Magdalena Ventura with Her Husband and Son, 1631 \/ wikipedia<\/p>\n

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