Unlike most of the stories of the Tanach, the Book of Esther takes place outside the realm of the Holy Land. There is neither a Temple to defend nor the hope of redemption in a promised land. Instead it is very much a book of the diaspora, concerned with people struggling to live a full Jewish life far away from the spiritual center of Judaism. It is thus uniquely relevant to modern times where the vast number of Jews live outside the State of Israel.

The story of Purim is not Anti-Zionist or atheist; it simply (and explicitly) ignores the discourses of Divine intervention and sacred land that inform most of the Tanach. None of the characters communicate directly with God; when Mordecai and Esther find out about their fate, they can only mourn and cry out (to whom?). The plot is propelled by human action rather than through plagues or divinely-spawned maws in the earth. God is not in the Book of Esther because it is a text of an era where the actors have ultimate control of their own fates. Mordecai refuses to bow down to Haman and faces the consequences; Esther steps forward to plea for her people and risks her own life.

And just as there is no Divine intervention when the Jews of the Persian Empire are faced with a problem, there are similarly no impediments when they assume power. It seems downright wrong to modern sensiblities when, later in the Book of Esther, we are told that some non-Jewish citizens of the Empire pretended to be Jewish in order to avoid vengeful Jewish mobs. In Esther, God does not step forward to save the Jews, neither does s/he step fowards to save non-Jews. In short, when we live in times where there are no contemporary prophets to guide us, we as children of God, individually and communally, must take responsibility for our own actions.