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“In the mid-19th century,” Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern writes in this week’s cover story, “James G. Birney, a former slaveholder hailing from Danville, Kentucky, recognized the societal scourge that was the slave trade and decided to do something about it.”
Sometimes, breaking with expectations is precisely what you need. Just ask Moses.
2 . 26 . 21 The book of Esther, read during Purim, has a special place in American history. Though some have argued that the unifying biblical story for Americans is the account of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, the courage of the eponymous heroine of the book of Esther has also been a source of succor and moral inspiration in America since the days of the colonies. In the biblical story, Esther, after being taken to the palace of King Xerxes to be his queen, heroically risks her life for her people. At the urging of her cousin Mordecai, she acts to save her fellow Jews from the plot ...
Andrew Silow-Carroll is Editor in Chief of The NY Jewish Week. The cast of a Purim play staged by the Sephardic Jewish Community in New York in 1936. (Center for Jewish History via Wikimedia Commons) Ivanka Trump and Monica Lewinsky were both compared to Queen Esther. Hillary Clinton called the star of the Purim story her favorite biblical heroine. In 1862, an abolitionist minister quoted the Book of Esther in calling on President Lincoln to free the slaves. Those are just a few of the ways the Book of Esther has been deployed in American political and cultural life. Ministers, rabbis, politi...