Believers and biblical scholars, correct me if I'm wrong, but the Book of Esther and the Song of Songs are the only two books of the Hebrew Bible that do not mention God; that’s what David Blumenthal says. Esther's Book mentions mass quantities of food and drink frequently, but not God. The Song of Songs is an “11” on the hubba-hubba meter, but there’s no God-talk. Scholars of traditional Judaism highlight their belief in God's overt intervention but through coincidental events and dynamic individuals.
The Book of Esther is known also as "The Scroll." The Scroll sits in the third section of the Hebrew Bible, one of the five scrolls to be found in it and portions of which were absorbed into the "Christian" Old Testament. A Jewish woman born as Hadassah in Persia who came to be known as Esther, she becomes Queen of Persia and averts the genocidal disaster of her people.
A facsimile edition published by Taschen is based upon the manuscript scroll held by the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek, in Hanover, Germany. Dated as between 1740 and 1746, it measures over 20 feet in length. Mine unrolls to 21 feet and rolls up into a tight box for transport and safe-keeping. Lavishly illustrated and containing a contemporary German version of the story of Esther, the biblical scholar Falk Wiesemann has provided compelling evidence that the artist of the so-called Hanover Scroll of Esther was Wolf Leib Katz Poppers. Poppers was a Jewish scribe and illustrator from Hildesheim. Another edition of the Esther Scroll, held currently in Switzerland, "contains one of the most finely executed series of illustrations to be found in decorated megillot (sing. megillah) . . . detailed figures, scenes, and animals with delicate parallel and cross-hatched pen strokes . . . text columns [being] interspersed with eight elegant full-length characters from the Esther story."
The Hanover, Germany copy "was produced for a member of a small, affluent community of Turkish Jews who, after 1718, were permitted to live and trade freely in Vienna, while still remaining subjects of the Sultan of Turkey." My copy comes complete with an introductory essay, the biblical text of the Book of Esther. It is an extraordinary book and Book, and is printed in quadrulingual fashion, too: German, French, English and Hebrew.
But that’s what women do, right? They cook and they build, they serve food and they dish out justice; they give forth life and nurture it anew. Esther's story, passed down orally and eventually put down onto a scroll, became the fulcrum of the Jewish festival of Purim, which justly celebrates the existence and thriving of the Jews in Persia in the 5th century B.C.E. under the King Xerxes I. I love saying "Xerxes." Xerxes. Say it with me: "Xerxes." A 1960 movie about the story, Esther and the King, starred Joan Collins and Richard Egan. She’ll melt your butter.
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