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In those days, a terrible thing happened,
for two officials of the king committed an offence
against their master, and with a flask,
they plotted to poison the king without delay.
Mordecai, who had…
Nothing else makes me really rage
as when a poor man does something [wrong]
he is lost here and there
everyone would happily drink his blood.
But what the rich do here
is always all right
people let…
This lithograph of a micrographic drawing, believed to be from Poland, reproduces the text of the scroll of Esther in its entirety, as well as prayers and poems for the holiday of Purim. In the center…
It happened in the days of Ahasuerus—that Ahasuerus who reigned over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces from India to Ethiopia. In those days, when King Ahasuerus occupied the royal…
The book of Esther is chanted aloud from a scroll (megillah) on the holiday of Purim. This example from the Netherlands is lavishly decorated, with the Hebrew text framed by arcades between which are…
These woodcuts appeared in Sefer minhagim (Book of Customs), a very popular Yiddish book published by Giovanni di Gara, the leading publisher of Jewish books in Venice from 1564 to 1609. It was the…
This photograph of two Jews reduces them to an abstraction, a single black shape, in a composition that includes the round shapes of manhole covers, the curving black lines of a street grating, and…
Purim plays (Purim shpiln, in Yiddish), sometimes also called Esther plays, have been known since the fifteenth century in both Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities. These folk plays were performed on…
Question: . . . When Rabbi Joseph Ottolenghi was visiting this land, he told me that he printed sixteen megillot on parchment prepared for this purpose [i.e., to be used for the scrolls—Ed.]. When I…
Lot (puru), Assyria, 8th century BCE. The inscription identifies this as a lot (puru—the Akkadian form of Hebrew pur, the word used in Esther 3:7) that belonged to an Assyrian official named Yahalu…
