(RNS) — On the Jewish holiday of Purim, which falls on March 14 this year, gifts of food are exchanged, charity is generously distributed and the Book of Esther is read in synagogues. It is a singularly uninhibited Jewish day, too. Revelry reigns. Children (and many adults) don funny masks and costumes; there are festive family meals complete with singing and a more-than-usual amount of wine.
The unusual merriment derives from what the holiday celebrates: a major community of Jews escaping a planned mass slaughter.
In Iran.
Well, ancient Persia, to be precise, the empire whose identity modern-day Iran embraces with pride. And today, of course, Iran, like its antecedent in the distant past, also threatens a large community of Jews, those in the state of Israel.
As recounted in the Bible’s Book of Esther, a member of the Persian king’s court, Haman, sought to wipe out the kingdom’s Jewish subjects. According to Jewish tradition, the heartfelt prayers of the community at the time merited God’s intercession and the exposure, and routing, of Haman’s designs.
These days, Iranian clerics regularly predict Israel’s “annihilation.” Iranian leaders leave open the possibility that they really mean only the Jewish state’s bloodless internal collapse, but paraded Iranian missiles inscribed “Death to Israel” seem to telegraph less benign plans.
Although Iranian proxies — including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — have been weakened in recent months, the heir to ancient Persia remains focused on Jews, and remains a formidable power.
Last year, then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken estimated that the “breakout time” — how long it is believed Iran would need to ramp up its enrichment of uranium to bomb-fuel purity — is “probably one or two weeks.”
And so Purim these days sparks hope in Jewish hearts that Iran will be prevented from fulfilling its dream of destroying what it calls the “Little Satan” (we Americans being the “Great Satan”).
The evil plotter of the Book of Esther, Haman, according to the Talmud, derided the Jews to the king as “a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of others … ” and recommended their annihilation.
He was, thankfully, thwarted in his plan — as was a more recent Jew-hater, 72 years ago.
“The Jews are not a nation,” contended Soviet leader Iosef Vissarionovich Dzugashvili, whom we better know as Josef Stalin. The quote comes from the late investigative journalist Arkadi Vaksberg in his 1995 book, “Stalin Against the Jews.”
Stalin reportedly came to harbor deep antipathy toward the Jewish people, especially after World War II. In November 1948, he launched a campaign to liquidate what was left of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union. Jewish museums and cultural institutions were shut down.
On the night of Aug. 12, 1952, remembered as the “Night of the Murdered Poets,” 13 prominent Yiddish writers were executed on Stalin’s orders. Among his other murderous initiatives was the infamous “Doctors’ Plot,” a fabricated accusation that a group of doctors had been conspiring to kill top Communist Party leaders.
In January 1953, Stalin asserted that the alleged plot was part of a worldwide conspiracy, led by those always-convenient global conspirators, the Jews, under the direction of the United States. Hundreds of Jews were arrested, others were dismissed from their jobs and others were summarily executed.
The next month, the Kremlin ordered the construction of four large prison camps in the Soviet far east, where Jews expected to be banished as enemies of the state.
Two weeks after the camps were ordered built, Stalin died at the age of 73, collapsing after an all-night dinner with four members of his Politburo at Blizhnaya, a north Moscow dacha, and languishing for several days before dying.
According to Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, who was present at the Blizhnaya feast, his predecessor had become thoroughly drunk at the party, which, Khrushchev testified further, ended in the early hours of March 1.
Which, in 1953, corresponded to the 14th day of the Jewish month Adar – Purim.
This Adar, as Purim celebrators prepare to commemorate the downfall of an ancient Persian persecutor, and remember the drunken death of a dictator, many of us are praying for a similar frustration of some Jew-haters’ plans today.
(Rabbi Avi Shafran writes widely in Jewish and general media and blogs at rabbishafran.com. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)