Finding God in the Purim Story

By Andrew Jacobson

Every Tuesday, the Nachshon Project takes us to the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem for an afternoon of learning. Along with several other fellows, I am taking a course titled "Jewish Identity as Reflected in Tanach" with Howard Markose. Each week we tackle a new subject - Shabbat and conversion amongst them so far. Last week - given the holiday - we confronted one question in particular: Is G-d present in Megillat Esther? Well, He is not mentioned explicitly. At no point in the ten chapter story are any of G-d's names said outright. He is textually absent, a weird fact given that He is mentioned by name in quite literally every single other book in Tanakh bar the Song of Songs. 

But what if we peel back the facade and look deeper? And if we do find G-d, albeit hidden and concealed, what statement does this make - about the nature of G-d, but more importantly, about the nature of ourselves, coincidences, and the phenomenon of free will? Maybe He is trying to teach us something about the necessity of humans to take action when they see injustice, especially to their own people? We investigated, by first reading the story through and then making note of any odd coincidences and textual anomalies.

Here's what we found: 

1. The plot-line of Megillat Esther seems pretty typical: They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat. 
2. G-d's presence may actually have textual basis. YaHWaH (G-d's four letter name) appears as an acronym at four separate points throughout the Megillah, and in a very distinct pattern. The first time (1:20), each letter (Y, H, W, H) is at the beginning of the word, and the letters are spelled backwards. The second time (5:4), the letters are also at the beginning of the word, but they're spelled forwards. The third (5:13), they're spelled backwards as the last letters of each word, and lastly (7:5) they're spelled forwards, also as the last letters of each word.
3. The word melech, King (and another name of G-d), appears a shocking number of times, and many times the megillah does not qualify its use by referring to King Achashverosh.

So G-d might appear textually. But what about in terms of content, the plot-line? I figured this was a pretty simple question - after all, when I finished reading the megillah, I said, really? All those astonishing coincidences without G-d's help? Consider a few examples: 

• Esther just happened to have been chosen queen.
• Mordechai just happened to overhear the conspirators plotting to kill the king.
• Mordechai just happened to be related to Esther.
• King Achashverosh just happened to not be able to sleep that particular night and looked in his Book of Chronicles only to find Mordechai's name is good esteem.

So maybe this is to say: The story of Purim is that of divine intervention in seemingly natural events. The part I love most is that you don't realize (or at least I didn't) how these seeming coincidences fit together to produce a positive ending for the Jews until the very hand. Such is life: what we experience is partly a result of our decisions, and partly a result of the conditions. Part is within our control and part isn't. And when the part that isn't effects our lives - for better or for worse - it's never until the very end when we understand how it all fits together.