Conventionally, Purim is a carnival holiday, complete with costumes, revelry, and (we are commanded) drunkenness. Jews like to tell the story as one of hidden miracles and heroic reversal: a vulnerable Jewish woman becomes queen and saves her people.
We ignore—and in many cases forget—the truth: before Esther becomes a heroine, she is trafficked.
The Book of Esther opens, after all, with a state-sanctioned campaign of sexual exploitation. After Queen Vashti is deposed for refusing obedience, the king’s advisers propose a solution:
“Let beautiful young betulot (virgins) be sought out for the king… and let them be gathered to the harem.” In the ancient world, that term often signaled not merely sexual inexperience but youth. The Megillah does not linger on their ages, but it does not need to. A system that prizes virginity, removes girls from their families, and renders them sexually available to men with absolute power is easily recognized today as violence. More so, violence that is bureaucratized, sanitized by protocol, and carried out in the name of royal order.
When it comes to Esther, we know she does not volunteer. The text is explicit: “Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus.” Her silence is not strategy or modesty; it is survival.
The marriage between Ahaseurus and Esther is not romance. It is coercion backed by absolute power.
That matters because the exploitation of women and children is not only ancient history; it remains a global crisis, with an estimated 40.3 million people in modern slavery, including 24.9 million in forced labor and 15.4 million in forced marriage. While exact figures are difficult to determine because of the clandestine nature of these crimes, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that women and children make up about 77% of all identified trafficking victims worldwide. Alarmingly, the report noted an increase in the trafficking of girls for sexual exploitation, with research that women and girls account for over 90% of those trafficked in the commercial sex industry.
In the United States, human trafficking has been reported in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, on Tribal land, and within U.S. territories. Child trafficking and sexual exploitation disproportionately impact vulnerable communities experiencing generational trauma and systemic inequality, particularly LGBTQ+ children and children of color. Modern trafficking, like the harem system in Shushan that delivers Esther to Ahasuerus, relies on displacement, secrecy, and authority. While trafficking is a crime, it persists not only through criminal networks, but through silence, especially when exploitation is reframed as opportunity, survival, or inevitability.
This crisis is not hidden in shadows; it infiltrates schools, streets, online platforms, and our communities. Traffickers prey on vulnerability, targeting runaways, foster youth, and other children struggling with instability. Tragically, the systemic inequalities that exacerbate vulnerabilities also cause many, if not most, cases to go unreported or unidentified. All too often, our moral imagination fails to see what our eyes pass over.
Purim refuses that narrative.
We want Esther’s ascent to feel empowering. We want her beauty to be incidental, her rise to be a choice. But the Megillah shares a more complex view. Redemption emerges not from a clean moral universe, but from inside a system that is violent, sexualized, and profoundly unequal.
Esther’s courage does not erase what was done to her. It comes after harm, not instead of it. She saves her people while remaining trapped in the palace. The system does not collapse. The women of the harem do not go free. Salvation is partial, morally compromised, and comes at a personal cost.
That is not a failure of the story. It is its ethical demand. Purim teaches that survival can coexist with injustice, and that joy does not require denial. It demands that we name exploitation even when it cannot be undone, and that there are times to celebrate resilience even when violent systems are left intact.
We read Megillat Esther aloud every year, every word, including the ones we wish weren’t there. Especially those. Because Purim does not ask us to confuse survival with justice. It asks us to remember that redemption can be incomplete, and that joy is not the same as moral repair.
Purim’s command is not only to celebrate, but to tell the truth. To notice whose bodies are still treated as expendable, whose silence is mistaken for consent, and whose suffering is hidden behind pageantry and power. If we honor Esther truly, we must confront a world where women and children continue to be trafficked—unequally protected and too often unseen.
If we honor Esther truly, we must confront a world where women and children continue to be trafficked—unequally protected and too often unseen.
The Megillah ends with feasting and relief. But it leaves the palace standing with Esther trapped inside.
And that means the work of Purim does not end with the reading of the scroll. It begins there, when we refuse to avert our eyes, when we insist on naming exploitation for what it is, and when we understand that the truest way to honor Esther is not to romanticize her story, but to make sure fewer girls and women are ever forced to live it.
—Lori Cohen, Esq., is the Chief Executive Officer of Protect All Children from Trafficking (PACT), and an attorney who has represented human trafficking victims. Rabba Daphne Lazar Price is the Executive Director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance and an adjunct professor of Jewish law at Georgetown University Law School.
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