The Book of Esther and the Jewish Festival Purim | Hacker News Reader

The Book of Esther and the Jewish Festival Purim

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32 pointsdiodorus41 comments

> As God’s name is not explicitly mentioned in the Book of Esther, it was considered permissible to illustrate it.

Wow. Does anybody have some good info abut this aspect of Judaism, wikipedia doesn't have much. Specifically I'd like to know the historical reliable sources about it, not the qoutes from the Bible, that is, I'm interested in the evidence for and against the use of illustrations among the Jews.

In Judaism, G-d has no physical form nor image, so there would be no way to illustrate G-d:

http://www.jewfaq.org/human.htm#Image and http://www.jewfaq.org/g-d.htm

This may be the wikipedia page you're looking for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniconism_in_Judaism

I heard a similar explanation from a rabbi just a few days ago. Quite interesting and thanks for sharing.

Due to this belief you get some interesting Jewish thoughts. Such as Atheist Jews who do not believe a supernatural being exists. But that G-d is the spirit / will / empathy of the people in aggregate. For example a Jewish Atheist would say it was not some super natural being's doing that saved the Jews from the holocaust, but the good nature of people in aggregate. And it was that good nature that represents G-d.

Finally as the joke goes in Judaism. You've got 2 Jews in a room and 5 conflicting opinions.

They way I remember it, it was 10 conflicting opinions...

binary 10 ?

it was 3. Or maybe at least 3

It's related to the 3rd commandment to not make an image of G-d.

I don't believe the permission to illustrate the megillah has anything to do with G-d's name not being mentioned, as there are accepted illustrations of Tanach (where G-d's name is mentioned) across the spectrum. As long as there is no depiction of G-d it is fine.

As an orthodox Jew, I have no reason to believe that any other orthodox Jew would be OK with making a depiction of G-d. If someone else did, it would just be avoided. I can't speak for any other denominations.

Another thing an orthodox Jew might do is preface any anthropomorphic mention of G-d with "kavayachol" meaning "as if it were possible" (loosely translated as "so to speak"), in recognition of the fact that G-d cannot be prescribed physical qualities.

Edit: just saw your note about historical precedence. For an orthodox Jew there is no separation of what it says in the Torah and what has happened historically. We follow a masoretic tradition as to the interpretation of the Torah. So as I said above, I can't imagine an orthodox Jew being OK with a depiction of G-d from a Torah standpoint.

> It's related to the 3rd commandment to not make an image of G-d.

You should be more exact: It's not possible to make an image of G-d since G-d does not have a form, so it doesn't matter what image is made, it's certain that that is not an image of G-d.

What's forbidden is to make an image and consider it a (or as) G-d. Not that it is (necessarily) an image of G-d.

The canonical discussions of just this issue through Torah, Midrash and Talmud, as well as later Rabbinic writings span literally volumes. It is not possible to be "exact" about the halakhah around portrayals of G-d, which include images, analogies, textual writings of the divine name, uttering and pronouncing the divine name, and describing the nature of the divine. If you want to lay claim to being "exact" we'll need to see some Tractate references.

I'm not aware of any such rule. If you notice all the illustrators mentioned in the article were Christian (at least they seemed that way to me from the names).

What's prohibited is a 3 dimensional form (i.e. like a sculpture, not just thickness as from the layers of paint and the like). A 2D image is fine unless there is intent to worship it.

There are some additional details, for example an image of a celestial being (sun, moon, angel, etc) is assumed to be for worship, unless known otherwise, while an earthy image is not assumed that way.

I'm not sure what they are getting at there. There are beautiful illustrated haggadahs (Passover prayer books, which certainly contain the divine name) dating back to the early middle ages. The British library (the linked site) owns several examples, including the Golden Haggadah: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_27210_f0...

I grew up as an Orthodox Jew and virtually all of the stories of the bible are heavily illustrated in many forms, both recently and in ancient times.

The fact that the Megilla doesn't contain the name of God is an interesting phenomenon and the source of a lot of commentary, but not for this reason.

  Some scholars have contended that given the striking resemblance between the names Esther and
  Mordecai to the Babylonian deities Marduk and Ishtar, the story was rooted in
  Babylonian worship practices...

They really just left that there, without any hint as to whether there's anything in common besides the names? The Wikipedia pages for Marduk and Ishtar don't give any hints AFAICT.

It's normal to have names based on divinities. E.g., Venus Williams. Or Jesus in Spanish names. It does not mean that the person is the god.

Sure, but that's sort of why it's odd that TFA seemed to be suggesting that the story was based on Babylonian religious practice, citing no evidence other than the similar names.

>references to Purim do not feature in the Jewish literature before the 1st century CE.

> the festival had long been established by the 2nd century CE as evidenced in the tractate Megilah of the Mishnah (corpus of the oral tradition of Jewish law).

I'm confused by this.

It's perfectly consistent with it being established in, say, the early 1st century CE and spreading rapidly; a century is plenty long enough for a festival to be "long established", which it was (per the quote) by the second century CE, despite being absent from the literature before the 1st century CE.

It wouldn't feature in the "literature" before then because the oral Torah was not allowed to be written down.

The compilation and writing of the Mishnah was in response to the inevitable upcoming exile.

For a contemporary example, Christmas trees do not feature in English or American Christmas traditions before the 19th century, but were long established by the 20th century. Ditto white wedding dresses.

(The rise of of both traditions dates back to Queen Victoria.)

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