again not to keep making you summarize things what in as much as little as much as little as you will you would like is trauma theory and why it's so important to read Esther in this way

Yeah.

Sorry.

So what is trauma theory or trauma hermeneutics? Because, you know, trauma hermeneutics is basically shorthand for you're going to read with the lens of trauma in mind.

But trauma theory itself is a little bit more complex because there's so many ways to... do trauma, right? So you can read it on kind of a literary level.

There are so many different literary trauma theorists and they analyze the text as either the characters inside are enacting trauma and they doing the things or they are analyzing it from the perspective of an author telling their own story or telling a story about their own trauma, right? But then you have sociological aspects of trauma.

So we're talking about constructs of trauma, and that doesn't mean that it's not real, but it does mean that in every way, shape, and form, when something bad happens to us, both as an individual and in a collective, we need to make sense of that thing and understand construct a narrative about what happened so a lot of that has to do sociological aspects have to do with how does that process happen what does what do these collective stories do ill or for good But part of it also has to do with neurological, psychological, like what happens inside of us as somatic entities when trauma occurs and when we experience those over maybe a short period or even a long period of time.

Sorry, big, I know, but yeah.

... that happens at the end, and I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about how that revenge fantasy is functioning or how it harms people, things like that.

Yeah, yeah.

I will say the...

Because there has been trauma-informed work that has been done brilliantly on specific parts, some of the brilliant pieces that have been done on trauma and Esther are done about these final chapters.

Two pieces in particular that I need to highlight, Sarah Manuel has a article, as well as Stephanie Day Powell, and both of them are in a open access journal called The Bible and Critical Theory.

Um, Sarah Manuel's piece really kicked off a lot of this for me.

She does read it as a revenge fantasy, as well as recognizing that the revenge fantasy has a different, has a sinister side.

Mm.

What, what are some insights that, that you glean from having a trauma-informed lens for, for reading Esther? And, you know, maybe what are some of the, uh, pitfalls in interpretation for, for those who, you know, haven't been thinking from this, uh, perspective?

Hmm.

Well, for starters, for me, when it came to... at the very least, when it came to reading Esther as a character, um, one of the worst things that I had to do, but also one of the more enjoyable things I had to do, was look through all of the different ways that Esther was characterized by interpreters.

You know, so she is either the femme fatale or super manipulative crybaby.

Uh, she's really just having a great time being queen and having spa days and doesn't want to be helpful to the Jews.

She's just, she's just a s- stubborn little teenager.

Um, my favorite comment was, I think like, something like, uh, I almost said slutty goy, but um, that was not what was said.

I wonder if you could just share some of your insights on those, uh, probably lesser-known parts of the story of Esther.