Consider:
Who were Bigthan and Teresh?
Why did Bigthan and Teresh talk openly in front of Mordechai?
Why did Mordechai report Bigthan and Teresh instead of confronting them?
(יג) בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם וּמָרְדֳּכַי יוֹשֵׁב בְּשַׁעַר הַמֶּלֶךְ קָצַף בִּגְתָן וָתֶרֶשׁ שְׁנֵי סָרִיסֵי הַמֶּלֶךְ וגו' (אסתר ב, כא), מַה קִּצָּפוֹן הָיָה שָׁם, מַעֲבִיר שְׁנַיִם וּמֵשִׁיב אֶחָד, מַעֲבִיר שְׁנֵי קְלַסָרִיקִין שֶׁהֵן שׁוֹמְרֵי הַסַּף וּמוֹשִׁיב הַבַּרְבָּרִי הַזֶּה.
“In those days, Mordekhai was sitting at the king's gate; two of the king's officials, Bigtan and Teresh […became angry]” – what was the anger there? He relieved two and set one in their place; he relieved two aristocrats who were the doorkeepers and set that barbarian [in their place].
Consider:
If all three men were non-Persians, why does Mordechai not identify more strongly with Bigthan and Teresh?
What benefit is there to Mordechai to report Bigthan and Teresh? What cost?
Are Jews White? by Emma Green (published in The Atlantic, December 5, 2016)
(https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/are-jews-white/509453/)
On the extreme right, Jews are seen as impure—a faux-white race that has tainted America. And on the extreme left, Jews are seen as part of a white-majority establishment that seeks to dominate people of color. Taken together, these attacks raise an interesting question: Are Jews white?
The Ethicist: "I’m Jewish and Don’t Identify as White. Why Must I Check That Box?" in The New York Times Magazine, October 13, 2020
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/im-jewish-and-dont-identify-as-white-why-must-i-check-that-box.html)
The experience of anti-Semitism is one reason many Jews have a deeper sense of the harms inflicted by racism than do white people who have not been victims of it. Indeed, Jews in Eastern Europe neither identified as white nor were identified as white when they arrived at these shores in a wave of migration that began more than a century ago...
[However, w]hat “white” means in America isn’t up to each of us to decide on our own. To change those meanings, we’d have to work together to change practices. If you don’t want to be white because you repudiate white supremacy or the racialization of public life, you first have to work alongside others to unmake an unjust social order...
No, Jews Aren’t White by Liel Leibovitz in Commentary, July/August 2021
Jews are just Jews, a difficult realization that has driven haters to distraction throughout the generations. It’s why we alone have been singled out for a specific kind of steady stream of suspicion and persecution throughout history, even here in America. It’s a torrent that hasn’t grown any weaker, no matter how cheerful we wish to be. In 2019, for example, nearly two-thirds of all religious-based hate crimes in America targeted Jews, a 14 percent increase from the previous year…and rising.
Jews are not white: Race and identity in Israel and the US - Opinion piece by Brian Blum, published in the Jerusalem Post, November 18, 2021
To be white these days “is a kind of slander,” writes The Jerusalem Post’s Seth Frantzman. Jews have been transformed into “white Jews” which Frantzman correctly notes is, at its core, “anti-Jewish.”
Muslims in Albania are not called “white Muslims,” he points out. Nor are there any “white Hindus,” “white Buddhists” or “white Catholics.”
“Only Jews are called ‘white Jews,’” Frantzman stresses, which forces them into the “white category in America, the category that means ‘majority’ and ‘privileged.’” As a result, in some American circles, identifying as Jewish “has become synonymous with ‘white supremacy,’” he says.
The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity by Eric L. Goldstein
Much has changed since 1945, when Jews still worried that their Jewishness might keep them from being accepted as full members of white society. Today, many Jews fear that their thorough implication in that society may sever some of their strongest ties to Jewishness. Jews no longer have the language of “race” to express these deep attachments, but instead rely on the echoes of Jewish racial identity, a discourse of “tribalism,” which gives voice to the feelings of loss Jews are experiencing in a world resistant to seeing them as a group apart. In addition, Jews have turned to the African American community in unprecedented ways in order to validate their own minority consciousness, a move that reflects their growing discomfort as white Americans. But like their renewed attempts at asserting Jewish “tribalism,” their desire to see themselves as part of the multicultural rainbow of minority groups has met with resistance in a society fundamentally shaped by the categories of black and white.