A photograph of a small, old book with Hebrew text and an illustration on the right-hand page. According to the Scroll of Esther, “they should make them days of feasting and gladness, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor. At this feast, Ahasuerus gets thoroughly drunk, and at the prompting of hamantaschen courtiers, orders his wife Vashti to display her beauty before the nobles and populace, wearing her royal crown.
The rabbis of the Oral Torah interpret this to mean that he wanted her to wear only her royal crown, meaning that she would be naked. Her refusal prompts Ahasuerus to have her removed from her post. Shortly afterwards, Mordecai discovers a plot by two palace guards Bigthan and Teresh to kill Ahasuerus. They are apprehended and hanged, and Mordecai’s service to the king is recorded in the daily record of the court. Ahasuerus appoints Haman as his viceroy. Mordecai, who sits at the palace gates, falls into Haman’s disfavor as he refuses to bow down to him. Having found out that Mordecai is Jewish, Haman plans to kill not just Mordecai but the entire Jewish minority in the empire.
Mordecai warns her that she will not be any safer in the palace than any other Jew, says that if she keeps silent, salvation for the Jews will arrive from some other quarter but “you and your father’s house will perish,” and suggests that she was elevated to the position of queen to be of help in just such an emergency. That night, Ahasuerus suffers from insomnia, and when the court’s daily records are read to him to help him fall asleep, he learns of the services rendered by Mordecai in the earlier plot against his life. Ahasuerus asks whether anything was done for Mordecai and is told that he received no recognition for saving the king’s life. Just then, Haman appears, and King Ahasuerus asks him what should be done for the man that the king wishes to honor. Later that evening, Ahasuerus and Haman attend Esther’s second banquet, at which she reveals that she is Jewish and that Haman is planning to exterminate her people, which includes her. Ahasuerus becomes enraged and instead orders Haman hanged on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. The previous decree against the Jewish people could not be annulled, so the King allows Mordecai and Esther to write another decree as they wish.