The Book of The Absent God

Yehudah Mirsky got the book of Esther right:

Part of Esther's strangeness lies, oddly, in its very familiarity. It takes place in a world where God hardly figures, where prophecy is but a memory, where lust, vanity, and arrogance call the tunes, and where flat-out redemption is too much to hope for.

Esther is the book of the Absent God. The Rabbinic reading is to make God not absent, so much as hidden. Regardless Esther remains the book most relevant for modern life - A world where Prophecy is silent, where miracles are a matter of belief, and where man seems to have to rely on his fellow man. It is a book that calls on the reader to find the Hidden god, and not the absent God.