A couple of thousand years ago, in ancient Persia—today’s Iran—a sinister, greedy, and unscrupulous man sought to exterminate the Jewish people simply because he could not bend them to his will.

Such was the magnitude of his ego and his wickedness that, merely because a single man refused to bow before him, he chose to condemn an entire nation. To justify this, he created a fiction: that these people, scattered throughout the kingdom, were dangerous to the king.

The biblical text does not explain why Haman hated the Jewish people. Probably, then as now, there was no reason at all.

Haman was not the first to falsely accuse the Jewish people. Sadly, he was not the last.

A few centuries later, another man in power in Iran—ancient Persia—just as sinister, greedy, and unscrupulous, repeated endlessly his vows for the extermination of the Jewish people.

Unlike King Achashverosh in the earlier story, who took care of his people and provided them with banquets, parties and alcohol, this modern dictator ruled through oppression. Under an endless system of prohibitions and restrictions, countless Iranian men, women and children suffered persecution, incarceration and death in their pursuit of an elusive freedom.

History has a way of repeating itself when its lessons go unlearned.

Haman’s downfall gave rise to the holiday of Purim. And among the ironies history sometimes offers, it was on the eve of this very holiday that Ali Khamenei, the current dictator of Iran, fell.

It was the courageous action of one woman, Queen Esther, that triggered the events that led to Haman’s downfall.

It was the courageous action of many Iranian women that ignited the uprisings against the Ayatola´s regime.

There are many parallels between these two stories—between past and present. Yet there is one in particular that sent chills down my spine when I learned about it.

The voracity and blind hatred of the dictator Khamenei knew no borders. Its reach extended as far as Buenos Aires, Argentina, where two of the most devastating terrorist attacks of modern times took place: the bombing of the Israeli Embassy and of the building of AMIA, the local Jewish Community, on Pasteur Street.

Many spiritual traditions teach that actions—both good and evil—eventually find their own form of retribution.

The building in which Khamenei died was located on a street named Pasteur.

My feeling is that 32 years later our dead rest with a little more peace.

Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech Shapira of Dinov (1783–1841), in his work Bnei Yissachar, mentions a tradition found in the Zohar according to which, in the future, the final war against Amalek (with whom evil and destruction is always identified in our texts) will begin on Purim and culminate on the eve of Passover.

It is, of course, a mystical allegory whose deeper meaning lies beyond the scope of this article.

Yet I cannot help but hope that this allegory may find expression in reality.

Maybe, after all, history could also have its own form of poetic justice.

Maybe, the struggle that began in Purim in defense of freedom, human dignity and the basic right to live in peace finally come to an end, once and for all.

And hopefully, it will happen before Pessach.

Am Yisrael Chai. Today and always.

Vicky Ludmer March 5, 2026 16 Adar 5786

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