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Esther: The Outer Narrative and the Hidden Reading
by JONATHAN GROSSMAN
(Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011)
Reviewed by
Yitzchak Blau
Tanakh study in contemporary Modern Orthodoxy may include such disparate elements as rabbinic midrashim, traditional biblical commentary, academic biblical scholarship, and the new school of interpretation popular in Machon Herzog and elsewhere in Israel. Only rarely does a work integrate contributions of each of these approaches; fortunately, Jonathan Grossman's Esther: The Outer Narrative and the Hidden Reading is just such a work. This volume should help introduce Grossman, a faculty member at Bar Ilan University and a rising star in the Israeli Religious Zionist world, to the English speaking public.1 (In the interest of full disclosure, I note that I live in the same neighborhood as Grossman.)
Midreshei Hazal and the commentaries of Rashi and Ibn Ezra make frequent appearances in this volume. Even aharonim less frequently cited by moderns, such as Malbim, find a place. Malbim suggests that Haman used purposefully ambiguous language never clarifying to Ahasuerus his plan to kill the Jews. This accounts for the king's shock when Esther reveals her danger. Grossman adds that, since the verb "abed" can also refer to exile and loss of freedom, Haman's words before the king could speak of ser vitude or destruction. Support for this idea comes from a later verse when Esther tells the king that she would have remained silent if her people had been sold into slavery (7:4). Here, she informs her husband that he understood Haman as talking about slavery but his minister truly wanted to annihilate her people.
In one instance, greater usage of traditional commentary would have helped Grossman. He includes a chapter discussing our moral struggle with the sheer number of people the Jews killed and the inclusion of women and children among the victims in the letters allowing the Jews to kill their enemies. In his argument that the Jews had no bloodlust, Grossman points out that the Jews chose to celebrate the day of rest rather than the day of fighting. In this, he was preceded by R. Meir Simha ha-Kohen of Dvinsk.2 In terms of the women and children, both Ibn Ezra and the GRA explain that the only method for reversing the royal...