From Warsaw to Shushan: The Jewish Refusal to Bow

Refusal to bow to other gods

From Warsaw to Shushan: The Jewish Refusal to Bow

By: Zahava Schwartz

At 2 a.m. yesterday, sirens pierced the dark and I rushed toward the bomb shelter. But my thoughts went straight to where I had been one week earlier. Poland.

I was staffing a trip with young Jewish men and women studying abroad in Europe and Israel. We walked through Majdanek and stood at Auschwitz and Birkenau, facing barracks, crematoria, and the remnants of erased lives.

Then we went to Warsaw, where we stopped at 18 Miła Street, the site above the bunker that served as headquarters for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After days immersed in destruction, standing there with the next generation of Jewish leadership felt different. Miła 18 is not only a symbol of how Jews died. It is a symbol of how Jews chose to stand and fight.

At just 23 years old, Mordechai Anielewicz was the commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

He led the Jewish Fighting Organization against the Nazis, rejecting the illusion that quiet obedience might save Jewish life. He unified underground movements, trained fighters, built bunkers, and secured what weapons he could. In January 1943, when German forces entered the ghetto to resume deportations, Jewish fighters opened fire. The Germans temporarily halted the deportations. For the first time, Jewish resistance forced the Nazi machine to hesitate.

On April 19, 1943, the Germans returned in overwhelming force to liquidate the ghetto. Thousands of troops advanced with armored vehicles and heavy weapons. Poorly armed Jewish fighters held them off for nearly a month. According to SS General Jürgen Stroop’s own report, 16 German soldiers were killed and approximately 85 wounded, but historians believe the true numbers were higher. Trapped, starving, and outgunned, Jews inflicted real losses and forced one of the most powerful armies in the world to fight block by block.

On April 23, Anielewicz wrote:

“It is impossible to put into words what we have been through… what happened exceeded our boldest dreams… The dream of my life has risen to become fact. Self-defense in the ghetto will have been a reality. Jewish armed resistance and revenge are facts. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men in battle.”

On May 8, German forces located the bunker. Smoke and gas were pumped inside. Anielewicz and his comrades chose death rather than surrender.

Standing there, after walking through places where Jews had no power to resist, I began to see a deeper thread. Because it was right then that the leader of the group pointed out that the story of Mordechai Anielewicz did not begin in Warsaw. It began in Shushan with another Jew named Mordechai.

In the Book of Esther, the Jewish people live scattered across the Persian Empire without sovereignty. Mordechai, cousin and caretaker of Esther, who has just become queen, sits at the king’s gate, uncovers an assassination plot and reports it, acting out of integrity, not for reward.

Then Haman rises and demands that everyone bow. Scripture tells us:

All the king’s courtiers in the palace gate knelt and bowed low to Haman, for such was the king’s order concerning him; but Mordechai would not kneel or bow low.

(Esther 3:2)

His refusal is dangerous. A public stand when Jews have no army and no political protection. He knows what his stand will cost. But he is not a frightened Jew. He is a proud one. So he stands anyway, and his defiance triggers a decree of annihilation against his entire people.

When Mordechai learns of the decree, Scripture tells us:

When Mordechai learned all that had happened, Mordechai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes. He went through the city, crying out loudly and bitterly,

(Esther 4:1)

He doesn’t mourn in hiding. He stands at the king’s gate in sackcloth, in plain sight of his enemies. And he refuses to be passive in the face of annihilation. He challenges Esther:

“Mordechai had this message delivered to Esther: “Do not imagine that you, of all the Yehudim, will escape with your life by being in the king’s palace.

On the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Yehudim from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis.”

(Esther 4:13-14)

Mordechai has full faith that the Jewish people will be saved. But he knows it will not be through silence. Action needs to be taken. And Esther understands. She calls the Jews to fast, to gather, to prepare. That fast is the one we observe today — Ta’anit Esther, the Fast of Esther.

The Fast of Esther is not a fast of defeat. It is a fast before battle, a spiritual preparation before a confrontation. A people gathering itself before standing up for itself. And when the day came:

“Throughout the provinces of King Ahasuerus, the Yehudim mustered in their cities to attack those who sought their hurt; and no one could withstand them, for the fear of them had fallen upon all the peoples” (Esther 9:2)

Both Mordechais faced regimes that sought Jewish destruction, and both understood that survival required something more than hoping the storm would pass.

Today, as we fast, Israel is at war with Iran. Missiles are flying. Sirens are sounding across Israeli cities. Families move between normal life and shelter within minutes. Once again, a regime rooted in ancient Persia threatens Jewish destruction. Once again, Jews face the choice between fear and resolve.

But we are not defenceless!

Anielewicz dreamed of Jewish self-defence inside a sealed ghetto. Mordechai of Shushan organized a vulnerable people in exile. Today, Jews defend themselves in their own state, with an army, with air defences, with sovereignty. Today, we fast as a nation standing on its own soil.

“And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis.” (Esther 4:14)

That question did not end in Shushan. It did not end in Warsaw. It is asked of every generation. We’re still called on to answer.

COMMENT: At the Pesach Seder, we chant the V’hei She’amdah -

"And it is this that has stood by our ancestors and for us. For not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation, they rise against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, rescues us from their hand".

1) The "this" (vehi) in the opening line refers to the covenant and promise God made to Abraham—and continued through generations—that despite suffering in exile, the Jewish people would be redeemed.

2) The passage highlights that Jewish persecution is not limited to the original Pharaoh in Egypt, but is a recurring, historical phenomenon. It frames Jewish history as one of constant threats from Amalek to Haman, and modern instances of hatred.

3) While acknowledging the threat of destruction, the primary message is one of survival through divine protection. It serves as a reminder that despite attempts at annihilation, the Jewish people endure.

4) The passage connects the ancient struggle for freedom from Egypt to the ongoing, generational struggle for survival.