Doctors sometimes diagnose asthma in a way that feels almost reckless. If they suspect dangerously reactive airways, they do not wait for a random asthma attack in the middle of the night. They perform what is known as a bronchial challenge. A mild irritant is introduced in a controlled setting and the lungs are monitored. If the airways constrict, the diagnosis is confirmed. The irritant did not create the disease. It revealed inflammation that was already there. Better a provoked spasm in a hospital than suffocation at home.
Something similar happens in the Book of Esther. After King Achashverosh elevates Haman, all officials at the royal gate are commanded to bow. Everyone complies — except Mordechai. Day after day, he refuses. Courtiers warn him. They pressure him. Yet he stands upright.
The response is explosive. Haman is “filled with rage.” But the fury is not limited to one dissenter. When Haman learns that Mordechai is a Jew, he drafts a decree to annihilate every Jew in the empire - men, women, children across 127 provinces. At that moment, the Persian empire’s airway constricts.
The hatred was not born that day. It was ideological, waiting for a trigger. Mordechai did not invent it; he exposed it. He introduced the irritant that forced the system to reveal its pathology. Only after seeing the reaction clearly could the Jewish people organize, fast, appeal to Esther, and ultimately reverse the decree. That was Mordechai’s asthma test.
Not everyone was comfortable with it. The Megillah closes by saying that Mordechai was “accepted by the majority of his brethren” but not by all. The Sages notice the nuance. Some contemporaries, even respected rabbis, may have believed that his refusal to bow sparked the crisis unnecessarily. Why provoke Haman? Why risk awakening a sleeping hatred? Why not bow and preserve communal calm?
It is an ancient argument: Is peace the absence of friction or the absence of illusion?
Rabbi Leo DeePhoto: Netanel TevelThe story feels uncomfortably modern. When Israel defends its nine million citizens against the brutality of Hamas, critics often say the same thing: You are provoking antisemitism. If only you were quieter, softer, less assertive, the airway would remain open.
But the green bandanas on campuses, the chants in Western capitals, the open celebration of massacre — these were not created by Jewish self-defense. They were revealed by it. The bronchial challenge exposes the disease.
Revelation, uncomfortable as it is, carries a strange blessing. Now at least we know what we are facing. Illusions dissolve. Allies are clarified. Societies must decide whether they will tolerate the disease or treat it.
Mordechai’s test was dangerous. It triggered a crisis, but it may have saved a people. Sometimes diagnosis is noisy. Sometimes exposure feels like provocation. But hidden inflammation does not disappear through appeasement. It waits undiagnosed and inevitably undermines our long-term health. Better the spasm in daylight than the suffocation in denial.
- Rabbi Leo Dee is an educator living in Efrat. His second book, 'The Seven Facets of Healing’, is dedicated in memory of his wife Lucy, who, together with his daughters Maia and Rina, was murdered by terrorists in April 2023