Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

Often in my daily rhythm of film, fiction and childrens’ book recommendations I can forget for a moment that our library is also an excellent research facility. For example, we have four scholarly commentaries on the book of Esther and at least a dozen different translations. This is more than Sonoma State and SRJC have combined!

Last year around Purim I mentioned on the library’s blog the popular anthology we have on the topic, our song collections and picture books. (If you are interested in these you can search the blog for “Purim” and you’ll find the post.) This year I would like to encourage fledgling and seasoned scholars alike to check out our commentaries on the scroll upon which the festival is built.

First, I would like to recommend Carey A. Moore‘s commentary, published in the prestigious Anchor Bible series in 1971. The 70-page introduction would satisfy the curiosity of any historian about issues such as the book’s “lack of religious elements, its absence at Qumran, its questionable historicity.”

Frederic Bush‘s commentaries on the books of Ruth and Esther were published in a single volume of the World Biblical Commentary series in 1996. Bush used his expertise in Near Eastern studies and analyzed the literary structure of the book to figure out the answer to the question, “Is it possible that a proto version of Esther was amended in the Massoretic Text to make a solid case for the popular feast of Purim?”

Getting closer to our own tradition (after all, the Anchor Bible is an interfaith effort, while the World Biblical Commentary has a Christian orientation,) the ArtScroll Tanach series volume on the Book of Esther deserves your attention. The 24-page introduction titled, “The Period and the Miracle” was written by Rabbi Nosson Scherman, while the book was translated and compiled by Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz. The extensive running commentary pulled from many rabbinical sources makes this edition invaluable. Also, these sources are listed and explained at the end, in the bibliography.

Finally, for the advanced scholar amongst you we have a precious copy of “The First Targum to Esther: According to the Ms. Paris Hebrew 110 of the Bibliotheque Nationale“, translated and annotated by Bernard Grossfeld. (Targum refers to translation of the Tanach to Aramaic, the spoken language of the Jews in the post-exilic period.) It is a truly academic volume, recommended only to the most dedicated. But if you manage to follow the book’s reasoning you will be awarded with a deeper understanding of how historical manuscripts relate to each other and how they are used to decipher history.

I am hoping that this short overview of intellectual texts awaken in you the thirst for learning that we, I am proud to say, have the resources to satisfy.