On this episode of Our American Stories, the story of Queen Esther, told in the Book of Esther in the Bible, is usually read as a story of courage and survival. Less often, it is connected to the ideas that shaped American liberty. Rabbi Stuart Halpern, co-author of Jewish Roots of American Liberty, explains how this Old Testament story, including Esther, Mordecai, and King Xerxes, carried meaning into colonial America and helped shape the way people understood freedom, responsibility, and the role of faith in public life.

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