As Jews worldwide and especially in Israel, celebrated the holiday of Purim (lots) last week, a sense of deja vu was in the air. Contemporary affairs evoked echoes of the text read by Jews in the Scroll of Esther. Haman, the Persian “Prime Minister,” under the Emperorship of Ahaseurus (presumed to be Xerxes I, King of Persia and Media) set out to annihilate the Jewish people in and around 337 BCE. Haman convinced Ahaseurus to endorse an edict permitting him to commit genocide against the Jews in the Persian Empire, a form of the Final Solution to the Jewish question in those days. The reading of Haman’s call to eliminate the Jews is an eerie reminder to Israeli Jews of how some things have not changed. The recent president of Iran (formerly Persia), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had a similar call to “wipe the Jewish State off the map.” While Ahaseurus was made to understand that he had made a mistake by his beloved wife Esther, he could not reverse his decree. He therefore permitted the Jewish people to defend themselves against those Persians who had set out to kill the Jews by engaging in what we refer to today as a pre-emptive attack.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 15:17:17 +0000
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