Throughout almost all of our sacred texts, God is the prime mover, the hero of the story, the one who makes everything happen. So important was it to the rabbis of antiquity that God always be front and center, that they erased Moses from the Passover Haggadah. Nowhere in a traditional Haggadah will you find Moses’ name, because the Rabbis wanted us to focus on God as the agent of our delivery, not Moses. Similarly, when they wanted to shift the focus of Hanukah away from the Maccabees and onto God, they created the story of the miracle of the oil, which we find in the Talmud.
However, there is one notable example where somehow a story actually got into the Hebrew without God being mentioned even once. That is the story of Purim, told in the Book of Esther. Nowhere in the entire megillah is God’s name to be found. The only, oblique, statement which commentators pointed to as a reference to God was Mordecai’s admonishment to Esther “perhaps it was for this very instance that you have come to royalty” (Esther 4:14).
Fortunately for the peace of mind of the ancient rabbis, some person or persons decided to add extra verses to the story, in what became known as The Rest of Esther. This collection of verses, dating perhaps to the second or first century BCE, includes the name of God over 50 times. It also ‘corrects’ other perceived problems in the original Megillah, for example explaining how Esther was able to keep kosher all during her time in the palace, eating only fruits and vegetables. It is an explicitly religious text, in a way that the original version is not.
It was important for the Rabbis to locate God in the center of every story, to ensure that we see God’s power working in every aspect of our lives. Today that approach can be helpful to some of us, who find comfort in the idea that there is a higher power, an overall plan. For others, it is more difficult to believe in this idea, but rather focus on human agency and free will. The rabbis in the Talmud resolve this conflict, as always, by choosing both – God has a plan, and yet we also have free will (Brakhot 33b).
-Rabbi Bonnie Margulis