JOSH SEIDEMANN
I thought about Biblical intertextuality in, of all places, Las Vegas.
For more than a decade, I’ve attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) – an immense conference that sprawls across 23 million square feet and attracts more than 150,000 people each year. And for most of those years, I’ve benefitted from the kindness of strangers. Specifically, a team dispatched from B&H Photo Video that organizes minyanim and kosher meals for attendees. There are far more potential participants than the 40 or so who join, but for those of us privileged enough to be there, it’s a group where warmth and camaraderie pervades – where Chasidim and modern Israelis daven in the same minyan (and noch besser at a Sephardic beit k’neset led by a Lubavitch rabbi) and gather at the same table for meals. So how does Biblical exegesis fit into this equation?
Biblical texts often echo each other. Sometimes these parallels serve legal interpretation through gezerah shavah. Other times they illuminate lessons through shared imagery or linguistic patterns – what scholars call intertextuality.
Consider two moments of apparent resignation, separated by 1,100 years but linked by nearly identical linguistic construction.
Toward the end of Breishis, Jacob reacts to his sons’ insistence that Egypt’s viceroy (Joseph, though unbeknownst to Jacob at this point) has demanded Benjamin’s presence to secure Shimon’s release from prison. Jacob initially refuses. As famine intensifies, he relents. Even as he strategizes – instructing his sons to bring gifts, praying for G-d’s protection – Jacob voices resigned acknowledgement: “v’cha’asher sha’cholti, sha’cholti“—”As I have been bereaved, so am I bereaved” (Gen. 43:14). Rashi explains Jacob’s sadness as expressing, “Just as I have been bereaved of Joseph and Shimon, so will I be bereaved of Benjamin.”
Fast forward to Megilas Esther. When Mordechai urges Esther to intervene with King Achashverosh against Haman’s plot, she responds: “v’cha’asher avadi’ti, avadi’ti” – “And if I perish, I will perish” (Esther 4:16).
These are the only two instances of this syntactic pattern: v’cha’asher + perfect verb + same verb repeated. And if Biblical language is not random, then we are compelled to derive comparative meaning.
Both passages signal resignation of the subjects to forces beyond their control. But they express different strains of consequence.
Jacob’s resignation is personal. G-d has already assured Jacob of his family’s national future – at the ladder (Gen. 28:13-15) and later at Beth-El, shortly before Rachel’s death (Gen. 35:12). Jacob understands that no matter the circumstances – even the potential catastrophic loss of three sons – his surviving heirs would return to inherit the land. The nation would endure.
Esther has similar justification to view her fate as personal rather than national. One commentary suggests the doubled language reflects her recognition of dual threats: Whether by visiting the king without being summoned or whether by Haman’s decree, Esther perceives that she might perish (Da’at Mikra). Yet Esther, too, understands that the national fate would evolve independent of her involvement: Mordechai had already messaged, “Do not think that you, of all the Jews, will escape by being in the king’s palace. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and help will come to the Jews from another source, while you and your father’s house will perish” (Esther 4:13-14).
Esther’s situation presents a conundrum. Mordechai was clear – Esther’s intervention is largely unnecessary in the grand scheme because events would evolve toward a desired outcome regardless of her actions. Nevertheless, it was an opportunity she could (if not should) seize: “And who knows,” Mordechai asks rhetorically, “Perhaps it was for such a time that you became queen?” (Esther 4:15).
In this context, Esther’s response becomes more profound. She recognizes her personal fate will not affect ultimate national outcomes, yet she assumes the risk anyway.
This speaks to a fundamental tension in leadership: Are we mere cogs in a greater machine (“Relief and help will come from another source”) or the “right person at the right time” (“Perhaps it was for such a time . . .”)?
Even as Esther is assured the cause will succeed without her, she chooses to act, accepting personal risk for an outcome that transcends her individual survival. And this occurs even asMordechai seems to dilute the nobility of her choice: If “relief and help will come from another source,” then Esther’s efforts are fungible. The nation doesn’t need Esther to act, just someone to act, even if that action (or actor) remains wholly undefined.
Through this lens, what might have been resignation transforms to recognition: Esther recognizes the risk, recognizes she’s expendable, and yet knowing “relief and help will come from another source,” she acts anyway. The line between historical necessity and individual agency fades.
Shakespeare understood this tension. When Henry V rallies his vastly outnumbered army at Agincourt, he recasts duty to privilege:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he to-day who sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother . . .
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here.
(Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3)
Leadership settles a paradox: The cause transcends any individual’s leadership, even whiledepending upon the leader’s actions.
Which brings us back to Vegas. I knew the “ringleader” of the B&H crew as Mr. Tyrnauer – a big, gregarious guy with an always-on smile and two simple rules: Meals were on the house, but you finished what was on your plate. Woe to the diner who attempted to hide uneaten vegetables beneath a napkin. And you couldn’t claim ignorance, since the food was always presented French service with the opening line, “A halbe or a ganze?” (“Half or full portion?”).
On my second night in Las Vegas this year, I saw a portrait of Mr. Tyrnauer in the shul kitchen. I asked his lieutenant Pinchos when Mr. T would arrive, since I hadn’t seen him the day before. Pinchos paused and apologized: “I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. Tyrnauer passed away suddenly nearly a year ago.” The team had debated whether to continue. They decided to forge forward as a merit to the memory of Mr. Tyrnauer, Yisrael ben Eliyahu Dovid ha’Levi, a’h.
This was leadership and succession – even if unplanned.
Smaller perhaps than the national question surrounding Esther’s decision, but echoing themes that while humility recognizes replaceability, leadership is the response to temporal needs whose particularity we can serve, and whose opportunities we can embrace.
Josh Seidemann is a senior telecom attorney with broad
experience across private practice, government, and national
trade associations. He specializes in emerging technologies and
Federal regulatory policy shaping rural U.S. markets, and has
worked extensively with public and private sector organizations
to advance telehealth, distance education, and rural economic
development. In addition to his legal and policy work, he is a recognized thought
leader who publishes regularly in trade and academic outlets on the intersection
of technology and industry
