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March 6, 2023

A 14th-Century Jewish Community Viewed Itself as Having Relived the Book of Esther

Megillat Esther and Second Purim.

As the story of a diasporic Jewry threatened by anti-Semitic politicians, who must save themselves without prophetic guidance or explicit miracles, the book of Esther reflected the experience of Jews living in exile in a way no other biblical book could. Hence the proliferation of “Second Purims” or “Minor Purims,” local holidays commemorating particular communities’ rescue from an external threat, modeld after the holiday that begins this evening. Chaya Sara Oppenheim describes one such Second Purim, and the handwritten scroll associated with it:

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