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Are there any miracles in the Books of Esther and Ruth?

While the Books of Ruth and Esther each focus on a heroine, they depict very different pictures of Jewish life.
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February 25, 2015

While the Books of Ruth and Esther each focus on a heroine, they depict very different pictures of Jewish life. The Book of Ruth is a vignette of the Land of Israel a few hundred years after the Exodus. The Book of Esther is a broad canvas depicting the Jewish people in exile and a series of events connected to the life and politics of the time.

The story of Ruth is an idyllic picture, even though it begins with the personal suffering of Ruth, a convert who decided to join the Jewish nation and faith. It is a story of simple acts by an outstanding personality, a straightforward and profoundly believing individual.

Esther, on the other hand, unwillingly becomes queen. Her life unfolds in the royal court and she is closely connected with the state politics of her time. Esther is a hidden, yet very powerful person who affects and alters the course of history.

Despite her impact on the future of the Jewish people, Esther is the end of a history. Esther, herself, does not have known descendants (despite the midrash that claims that one of the kings of Persia was her son). Ruth, on the other hand, has a great future. In our sources, she is called “the mother of the kingdom,” because she is the great-grandmother of King David and in her is the beginning of the Jewish kingdom – until the days of Mashiach.

Neither book describes miraculous events. In the Book of Ruth the most extraordinary feature is Ruth herself. The miracle of Purim, too, has no supernatural event – which gives rise to a different understanding of what miracles are.

There certainly are supernatural miracles; the Bible describes many of them. But there is also another kind of miracle: these can be well-explained, interconnected events that somehow bring about a significant change. Beyond the supernatural, the Divine Presence can reveal itself through seeming coincidences and interconnections that add up to a miracle.

A miracle is defined not by the marvels involved in it, but rather by the meaning that it has for the people involved – what the daily prayer calls, “Your miracles that happen every day.”

The ability to see the miraculous in the everyday and in the ordinary is yet another way of connecting with the Divine. The Divine Providence is revealed through our ability to perceive the hidden, miraculous aspect of the commonplace events that make up our lives. Too clogged by habit and custom, our perception is often unable to see many truly glorious things. Every day we make blessings on many simple events: eating, sleeping, waking up, even bodily functions and in many ways, they are a call to us: Open your eyes! Think about the ordinary! See the power and the beauty in our existence!

Sometimes these minor events add up to something major, for which we feel compelled to give thanks. Yet even when they do not, we are called upon to seek and find the supreme in our simple daily life. While we cannot make holiday blessings every moment of our lives, we can keep in mind an essential component of our religion: God's Presence in everything, even in those things that we tend to oversee or ignore.

The Book of Esther teaches us that the holiday of Purim, with all its fun and sometimes wildness, is a paradigm of life. Our times may be less openly miraculous than the greatest and most evident of supernatural events. Still, God’s hand is in the story. Purim, then, is meaningful not only for itself, but also for the entire year. 

Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz is a leading Jewish scholar and author of an acclaimed commentary on the Talmud and is the founder of the Global Day of Jewish Learning.

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