יהודי סוריה בימי אנטיוכוס אפיפנס וספר יהודית

Not all the Jewish communities accepted the Scroll of Esther and its sanctity. This is evident even in the scroll itself in the statement that Mordecai and Esther were impelled to send a second message directing the communities to observe the holiday of Purim. Many doubts were raised by the sages of the Talmud about the sanctity of the scroll or the importance of the holiday. The Tractate Soferim points out that the sages in Eretz Yisrael would observe fast days after Purim because Taanit Esther fell on the Day of Nicanor, a Maccabean holiday, and they followed the rule of postponing a fast day when in conflict with a day of rejoicing. It seems that the rejection of the Scroll of Esther can be traced in literature in the Book of Judith wherein the heroine's actions are the opposite of those of Esther: Judith does not flinch from coming to the help of her people; just the reverse, she volunteers and offers herself compellingly. She does not allow herself to be contaminated by a pagan. She does not partake of the bread of the royal house. There is no scheming in her behavior; courageously she avenges her people through the sword. In his article on the Book of Judith in Beth Mikra No. 58, where he treats the book intensively, Professor Solomon Zeitlin rejects any historical connection with the story of Judith. According to him, the account belongs to the genre of didactic literature, a creation of a Jew dwelling in Antioch who, in his antagonism to the ruling regime, disguised the characters of his story through fictitious names. On the basis of an analysis of the Midrashim emanating from the story of Judith, B. Z. Luria comes to the conclusion that the author was not a Jew from Antioch but from another community in Syria, evident in the knowledge he possessed about the geography and history of the country. He might have come from the province of Apamea, and not going along with those who celebrated the holiday of Shushan, created an image of a heroine similar to the Hasmonean heroes. It was probably written in the first century BCE, since a Sadducean tendency can be detected aiming to counteract the decision of the Pharasaic Sanhedrin to sanctify the Scroll of Esther.