There was a man in Persia who sought to kill the Jews. He glorified violence. He used coercion to bend people to his will. He turned the people of the nation against the Jews, declaring that they were the source of their sorrows. He declared the Jews aliens in the land though many had been born there. He ignored the meaningful history that Jews had in Persia for generations and the contributions they had made. He understood the levers of power used in the civilized world and manipulated them – propaganda, fear, and the machinery of the state – to control a vast fortune and consolidate his rule. He was arrogant. He pursued every means necessary to accomplish his dastardly goal – the destruction of the Jews.
But in the end, “the evil plot that he devised against the Jews recoiled on his own head.”
Of whom do I speak?
If you were at temple recently you may be thinking of Haman, the villain of the Purim story from the Book of Esther. He plotted against the Jews only to have his plot foiled by Esther and Mordechai. He ended up impaled on the spike that he had prepared for Mordechai.
Or, if you have been more focused on the news, perhaps you are thinking of Iran’s late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For nearly forty years he spoke of annihilating Israel and the United States. He funded Hamas, which called for the murder of Jews everywhere. He denied the Holocaust. He supported terror movements across the region. And now he too is gone.
There is much ink being spilled and social media bandwidth being taken up by politicians, professional pundits, and amateur commentators declaring the military action against Iran legal and righteous, or illegal and immoral. I will leave that debate to others.
But as we marked Purim this week, I could not help but hear the echo of Esther 9:1:
“When the enemies of the Jews had hoped to gain mastery over them, the reverse occurred – the Jews gained mastery over those who hated them.”
May this fighting come to a swift and successful conclusion.
May the people of Israel live in safety.
And may the ancient civilization of Persia rise again to unlock the endless potential of its people and bring blessings to the world.
