Purim: When History Hides Its Author |
There is something unusual about the book of Esther that most people, even those who have heard the story many times, never quite register. God’s name does not appear in it. Not once. In a canon where the divine presence is announced on nearly every page, the book at the center of one of Judaism’s most joyful holidays is conspicuously, deliberately silent on the subject.
This is not an oversight. It is the argument.
The story is set in the Persian empire, where a Jewish community lives in exile, scattered and far from home. A powerful official named Haman convinces the king to issue a decree of total annihilation against every Jewish man, woman, and child in the known world. The decree is sealed with the royal ring and distributed across the empire. From every angle, it looks like the end.
What follows is a sequence of........