What the queen means to Jewish tradition and to resisting tyranny and persecution—in the seventeenth century and today.

Ahasuerus has Mordecai and Esther issue a new decree allowing Jews to kill anyone who may be suspected of trying to kill them in accordance with Haman's prior decree; more than 75,000 enemies of ...

The story begins with King Ahasuerus’s search for a new queen. One of the women he abducted to his harem was a Jewish girl named Hadassah, or Esther, who was being raised by her cousin Mordechai.

Sarah Halperin, 3, listens Sunday, March 16, 2014, as her father, Rabbi Yaacov Halperin, reads from the Book of Esther during the Jewish Festival of Purim at Chabad of the Lehigh Valley in South ...

Purim, the Jewish holiday based on the Book of Esther, starts today at sundown. The Purim celebration recounts the story of Queen Esther and how she saved the Jewish people from annihilation. The ...

An etching of an 1865 painting by Edward Armitage (1817-1896) showing queen Esther condemning Haman. Etching from a 1877 issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (Ken Wiedemann/Getty Images) The ...

Suzanna Murawski on “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt,” at the Jewish Museum, New York.

As the Book of Esther unfolds, we find a series of events that today would be (sadly) unthinkable. We find a young Jewish woman becoming the queen of the Persian Empire.

In his new book, “Esther in America: The Scroll’s Impact In and Impact On the United States” (Koren), Rabbi Dr. Stuart W. Halpern collects essays by 18 men and eight women showing how ...