Megillat Esther is the only adventure story in our Bible. It is fully self contained. It has a beginning, middle and end. It also neither references any other part of Tanach, nor relies on material elsewhere in Tanach. It also has a dramatic turning point, and that’s what I want to discuss in this piece.

And, here it is: For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another quarter, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this? (Esther 4:14)

The JSP translation renders the words B’ET HAZOT (‘at this time’) more dramatically as ‘in this crisis’. And, indeed, it was crunch time. The Jewish people, probably all of whom lived in the 127 provinces of the Persian Empire, were certainly facing an existential emergency. 

So, what ‘time’ was it? According to our tradition, it was Pesach. Haman, Persia’s chief minister and our national nemesis, had just executed his PUR (casting of lots), which determined that the Jews’ demise would take place in eleven months. To almost everyone in the vast empire, nothing had changed. The sun rose in the east and would set in the west, but Mordechai, a minor official in the Empire’s bureaucracy, knew that everything had changed and doom loomed for the Jewish people. In spite of the joyous Festival of Freedom, he donned........

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