Responding to Shirly Bahar's reading of the Book of Esther in “Coming Out as Queen: Jewish Identity, Queer Theory, and the Book of Esther” (this issue), this article counters that Esther's transformation is not one from hidden or closeted to “out” but one in which there is no preexisting Jewishness; her declaration is less a coming-out than a coming-to-be. Like the biblical Ruth, Esther provides a model of peoplehood that is voluntarily assumed rather than ancestral—a hedge against heritage as construed through the maternal line. The author then turns to more contemporary sources, including a reading of a short story by Nathan Englander, in order to question both an essentialist and a performative view of Jewish identity.