WHAT HAPPENED ON PURIM?
Tomorrow is Rosh Chodesh — the beginning of the month of Adar. In a few more days we will celebrate the holiday of Purim, remembering once again that some 2500 years ago HaShem saved us from total extermination. Many times we Jews were threatened by a people or a nation; at one time or another, as if threats or persecutions of Jews were something to be expected, common and that does not deserve to be questioned. In any case, what characterizes “Purim” is that at that time, ALL THE JEWS OF THE WORLD lived under “the same roof”: the Persian empire. In 475 BCE, Haman, the prime minister of the Persian Empire and the right-hand man of the Persian Emperor Achashverosh (Xerxes), issued a royal decree ordering the murder of all Jews in the Empire, promising those who participate in the massacres, that they could keep all the properties and money of the Jews. It would have been, God forbid, the first Holocaust. I clarify that I never use the word “Holocaust” lightly: and I reiterate that unlike 1940, in the times of Achashverosh, ALL the Jews of the world lived in the same Empire! Purim, then, could have been חס ושלום the “final solution” every anti-Semite dreamed of. And as it can be seen on the map, the Persian empire (in green) included, among other countries, Egypt, Turkey and also Judea or Yerushalayim where some 50,000 Jews lived at that time. In fact, there were no Jews outside the Persian empire. In that sense, the Jewish people never were so close to being completely erased from the face of the planet.
It is important to realize this historical fact to understand and appreciate the magnitude of the miracle of Purim (פרסום הנס) .
WHEN ALL JEWS WERE PERSIAN
But when and how did we become citizens of the Persian empire?
After leaving Egypt, our ancestors lived for approximately 800 years as a sovereign people in the land of Israel. In the year 586 B.C.E the Babylonian emperor Nebukhadnetsar conquered Yerushalayim. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered or died of starvation or disease. The Bet haMiqdash –or Great Temple of Jerusalem– was destroyed and more than 50,000 Jews were taken as captives and taken to Babylon.
In the year 539 BCE, Cyrus (called Koresh in Hebrew) defeated and conquered the Babylonian empire and proclaimed himself the first emperor of the Persian empire.
In the year 538 B.C. An enormous miracle occurred: the Persian Emperor — inspired by God, as he himself admitted (see below)– invited the Jewish people to return to Yerushalayim and rebuild the Bet haMiqdash. This great event is recorded in the last words of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible (see below). Thousands of Jews arrived in Israel led by Zerubabel and in the year 516 BCE, after 70 years of exile, as Yirmiyahu had prophesied, the reconstruction of the second Bet haMiqdash began. Over time the Jewish population of Israel continued to grow and at the time of Purim, in the first half of the 5th century B.C.E. no fewer than 50,000 Jews lived in Israel.
A VOLUNTARY EXILE
But not all Jews resided then in Israel. As it is unfortunately the case today, although everyone “could” live in Israel, the majority of Jews continued to live outside of Israel. Why? Because the Persian empire –the largest empire that existed in the history of mankind– gave the Jews the extraordinary opportunity to establish an international trade network that was very successful. Jews spread to all corners of the Persian Empire, reaching what is now the area of India and China. Taking advantage of the fact that the trade routes were protected by the Persian imperial guard, they set up an international trade network dedicated to export and import between Indochina and the West. Through the famous “silk road”, also protected by imperial guards, they imported silk and gold from China and exported spices, dyes, jade, lapis lazuli, and glass.
THE FIRST BANKERS WERE JEWS
The fact that the Jews were, as Haman confirmed (M. Esther 3:8), “scattered among all the peoples of the Persian empire” facilitated this type of international trade, and allowed the Yehudim to establish a new industry, in which also excelled: credit. A document written (in Hebrew) by a Jew in today’s Turkey could be cashed in India, when presented to another Jew living there. And in this way, those who traded with the Jews, avoided the enormous risk of transporting money, silver or gold over hundreds or thousands of kilometers. There is also a fascinating archaeological evidence about a Jewish family of “bankers” of that time, the Murashu (for more information,
see this article ).
All these data is important to understand
1. That Jews lived voluntarily scattered throughout all the confines of the Persian empire.
2. That as a result of the success of their trades, Jews did not intend to return to Israel for the time being. Although it should be noted that they supported Israel financially by permanently sending generous donations to the Bet haMiqdash and to the Yehudim who resided there.
3. That Haman’s edict was not going to affect only the Jews of one city or one province. On Purim, we celebrate that the elimination of ALL JEWS ALL THE WORLD was miraculously averted.
Rabbi Yosef Bitton
