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Communicating Esther: The Diffusion and Reception of a Biblical Dream book cover

1st Edition

Communicating Esther The Diffusion and Reception of a Biblical Dream

By Elihu Katz, Menahem Blondheim Copyright 2026
124 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

124 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This book presents a communications approach to the biblical story of Esther and the ritual that it anchors, the Jewish carnival of Purim. Esther, the second-most written about book of the Bible, is thought to be based on a tale that circulated around 400 BC, and was later transcribed and brought before the Jewish Sages with the request that it be canonized. It was, though God is not mentioned in... Read more

Introduction

Part I: Texting a Ritual

1.       Empire and Communication

2.       Scripting Drama

3.       Diaspora and Communication

4.       Canonizing of Esther

Part II: Ritualizing a Text

5.       Regulating a Bookish Carnival

6.       The Reception of Purim

7.       Framing Holidays

8.       Afterthoughts: Purim in Time and Space

Biography

Elihu Katz (1926-2021) was one of the founding fathers of communication as a discipline. After graduating from Columbia University and teaching at the University of Chicago, he immigrated to Israel, established communication studies in the country, and also served as the founding director of Israeli Television. After retiring from the Hebrew University and then from the University of Southern California (USC), he was for many years the Sterling Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Menahem Blondheim is the Karl and Matilda Newhouse Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communication and the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Currently serving as the Dean of the School of Media Studies at Israel’s College of Management, his research fields include the history of communication, particularly in the American and the Jewish experience, and media technologies, old and new.

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