Esther HaMalkah

Esther, whose Hebrew name was Hadassah (Esther 2:7), is the heroine of Megillat Esther, read every Purim. An orphan of the tribe of Binyamin, she was raised in Shushan, the Persian royal city, by her cousin Mordechai, who adopted her as his daughter (Esther 2:5-7). Taken into the palace of King Achashverosh, commonly identified with Xerxes I, she was made queen in his seventh year without revealing her people (Esther 2:10, 2:16-17). When the minister Haman won a decree to destroy the Jews, Mordechai urged that perhaps she had reached royalty 'for just such a crisis' (Esther 4:14). She asked the Jews of Shushan to fast three days and went to the king uninvited: 'if I am to perish, I shall perish' (Esther 4:16). Haman fell, and Esther with Mordechai wrote to confirm the festival of Purim (Esther 9:29-32). The Talmud counts her among the seven prophetesses (Megillah 14a). Many scholars read the book as a historical novella; Jewish tradition reads it as history.