What Was Esther’s Relationship to Mordechai?

The piece was written by Barry Levy then expanded and adapted for TABS by Zev Farber with the author’s permission.

In some cases this still happens in modern times. In spoken Hebrew, the modern state often is rendered as Isra’el (initialaleph), as it is in Arabic; the assassinated Prime Minister was known as Itzhak Rabin, not Yitzhak; etc.

Similarly, in the southern USA one puts in the motor of his car a liquid called ohl, even if spelled oil.

This leads to some confusion between third-person and first-person verb forms, but it is fairly widespread.

Tosafot noted that this spelling occurs elsewhere. Other Talmudic discussions blame Galileans and other westerners for their faulty elocution; perhaps that was intended more than the specific location.

If they were married, did they get divorced? If not, did Esther commit adultery by marrying Achashverosh? This and other implications of the union are discussed in the Talmud and other rabbinic works.

See, for example, Louis Ginsberg, The Legends of the Jews(trans. Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin; Skokie: Varda Books ed., 2003), 1140, 1142, in which he uses the language of uncle and niece to describe their relationship. This issue has been explored in some depth by Ari Zivotofsky in an English article for Jewish Action called, “Tzarich Iyun: Mordechai and Esther,” and in a Hebrew article on the Bar Ilan website called “על מרדכי ואסתר”. 

The above is Ralph Marcus’s translation from the Loeb edition. Marcus includes this note:

Scripture says that Esther was the daughter of Mordechai’s uncle, i.e., his cousin, but rabbinic tradition, like Josephus, makes her his niece. 

Marcus includes no references, so it is unclear to what he is referring.

E.g., Saadiah, Hai, Ibn Ezra, Rambam, Ibn Aknin, Ramban, and many others