Every year, I don some festive garb, and head to our interfaith community‘s Purim celebration. It has been said that most Jewish holidays fit one recurring theme: “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.” Purim certainly fits that template (along with Passover and Hanukkah). Growing up in a Reform temple, the notion that Purim also celebrates an interfaith marriage somehow never came up. Now, celebrating the holiday with my interfaith community seems particularly appropriate.
In the Purim story, Persian King Ahasuerus (apparently a Zoroastrian) chooses Esther in a beauty contest, not realizing that she is Jewish. When the Jews of the land are threatened with genocide, Esther outs herself to the King as Jewish, and convinces him to save her people.
The Purim story intrigues for many reasons. The Book of Esther, while part of the Jewish Bible, is not in the Torah, (the most holy Jewish text comprising the first five books of the Bible), but is thought to date from a much later period, with the story taking place somewhere between 600 and 400 BCE. In fact, oddly enough, the Book of Esther does not mention God. Esther, the heroine, with the help of her Uncle Mordecai, uses politics, diplomacy, and and her access to the king, to save her people. God gets no credit whatsoever. This, along with the fact that the celebration includes drinking, dressing in costumes, loud noise, and games, makes it a popular holiday with the growing secular, atheist and agnostic Jewish demographic, as well as with children. Purim shares a sense of rowdy release from social norms with Christian pre-Lenten Carnival festivities, and both holidays seem to trace their origins to “pagan” spring fertility rites.
But peering through an interfaith lens, the most radical and transgressive aspect of Purim is the fact that the Jewish community in Persia would have been doomed if Esther had not intermarried. It was only because of her marriage to the Persian king that she was in a place to step up and save her people. What would have happened if she had refused to marry him because he wasn’t Jewish?
Many have tried to explain away the fact of Esther’s interfaith marriage. Some speculate that she intermarried only because it enabled her to save her people: exceptional circumstances. Others argue that her interfaith marriage was acceptable because she was a woman, and Jewish law respects matrilinial descent. Another argument is that she had no choice in the matter (refusing the King could have meant death). More recently, the Purim story has been used as a cautionary tale–the problem is not the interfaith marriage, per se, but the secular lifestyle and “disengagement” that led to the interfaith marriage. One group of academics acknowledged that Esther’s marriage saved her people but was somehow able to conclude: “But the lesson is not that intermarriage is good.”
Interfaith marriage occurs throughout the Bible: it drives the plot line in many a Biblical story, and not all those who intermarry are women. As a “patrilinial Jew” and an interfaith person, I take issue with the idea that Esther’s interfaith marriage was acceptable only because she was a woman, or because of extenuating political circumstances. Or that she is somehow a heroine in spite of, and not because of, her immersion in Persian culture. It was, precisely, Esther’s cultural fluidity and willingness to intermarry that saved the Jews.
I cannot help hoping that when Jews across the world celebrate Purim, they may, perhaps in a moment of tipsy revelry, open their minds just a little bit more to all that is positive about interfaith marriages: not just ancient, allegorical interfaith marriages taking place in exotic far-off lands, but real, contemporary interfaith marriages.
Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and The Interfaith Family Journal (2019). Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.
Being Both 
To be fair, Hadassah (Esther) didn’t have much choice. The king had decreed that all “beautiful virgin girls” be rounded up for selection of a queen to replace the disobedient Vashti. I suppose Esther could’ve made herself disagreeable to the king in order not to be chosen but she didn’t, whatever her motive.
It’s also worth pointing out that Ruth, who had married a Jewish man who died, converted (in modern terms) before she married Boaz, father of the line that led to David and Jesus. Hers was the proto-conversion to Judaism.
In other cases, however, the commentators go to extreme lengths to deny intermarriage. For example, the Bible says that Tamar, married to Judah’s first-born Er, was the daughter of a Canaanite man. The commentators here translate “Canaanite” as “merchant” with the justification that 1) the story takes place in Canaan, therefore being a Canaanite would not be remarkable, therefore in this instance the word “Canaanite” must mean something other than… Canaanite, and 2) only a couple of generations up the chain (Abraham-Isaac), a prohibition against marrying the Canaanite locals was stated and would not have been so quickly violated, supporting the reading of “Canaanite” as “merchant.”
We sometimes go to great lengths to deny what people, as individuals, may choose to do when they’re not constrained, or feel no compulsion themselves, to do otherwise.
I am very intrigued by interfaith marriages in the Bible. Here’s the thing about Esther, though. After Queen Vashti’s exile, all the young women were rounded up to evaluate for queenship. But, the Uncle Mortacai encouraged this intermarrital union. The king didn’t know that she was jewish — and didn’t even seem to think about such restrictions in the marriage selection, until Esther outed herself for the sake of her community and life. Ruth did not convert until after her first husband had died. I am not sure, but the Bible does not say that she did.
I don’t know any interfaith marriages in the new testament except for a mention of Timothy’s Jewish/Greek parents.
But, as a Christian, it is interesting to analyze (especially since I have heard so much direct opposition) what the exact dictates are concerning interfaith marriages.
When it comes to Christianity, many say that the Bible does not support interfaith marriages.
They use the verses about “unevenly yolked,” and “Light has no fellowship with Darkness,” to justify their stance. I am studying whether this interpretation is correct, as well as the rammifications of such endeavors. It does seem to be a bit contradictory.