The dimension of this pogrom that failed is quite simply that it took place in Persia during the reign of King Xerxes (486-465 B.C.), monarch of the exiled Jews and of all the Persias.
The heroine is Esther, wife of the King (called ASSUERUS). The villain is Aman, minister to the King, whose counterpart is Mardochai, spokesman for the Jews.
Aman decided that there should be a pogrom of the Jews. At a banquet Esther accused Aman of treason. He was hanged. However, an irrevocable decree for the massacre of the Jews had been agreed upon by the King. A fresh decree proceeded from the King entitling the Jews to defend themselves against the followers of Aman. This they did victoriously, and they keep the feast of Purim annually to celebrate the occasion.
These are the bare bones of the story. Its details are highly indicative. Aman, incidentally, is or was the great bête noire of the Jews. It used to be the custom in Jewish communities on Purim to hang his effigy from a gibbet. All must be present in the synagogue for the reading of Esther and every time his name was mentioned in the reading the congregation clapped their hands and shouted—somewhat paradoxically—“Let his memory perish.”
Xerxes was the capricious despot who ordered the Hellespont to be whipped when his bridge was swept away and then ordered the engineers to be beheaded.
He was in line of descent from Cyrus, conqueror of Babylon (“How is fallen the son of the morning!”), who had given the Jews the right to return to their native land and rebuild the Temple. Xerxes ruled over a vast empire, although he failed to subjugate the Greeks, and it was on his return from that campaign that the story of Esther opens, he having lost the battle of Salamis in 480 B.C.
This lord of 127 provinces—from India to Ethiopia—gave a banquet for his war lords and satraps which lasted 170 days. On the seventh day he sent for his queen, Vashti, to show her off to his guests. She refused. Then according to the laws of the Medes and Persians, which once made could never be revoked, Vashti was deposed and to the 127 provinces the royal decree was sent that a man should be lord and master in his own house, and the whole world should take note of it.
A new harem was recruited, and from it Esther, a Jewess, cousin of Mordocai, was chosen as Queen of the Persias, her nationality remaining secret; “but, oh, she was fair,” writes the sacred chronicler, “she had beauty past all belief, to win men’s favour and their love.”
Aman enters upon the scene. He seems to have been a Macedonian fifth-columnist, ingratiating himself into the royal favour, with a view ultimately to deposing the King and regaining the lost empire of the Greeks. Inspired with this grandiose project he looked with suspicion on Mordecai, whom he, perhaps, saw in the role of a rival chief satrap, much as the prophet Daniel had been with Darius. He also hated the Jewish nation, whom for reasons of his own, personal and political, he sought to destroy.
The argument for pogrom which he fed to Xerxes was the familiar one: “There is a single people scattered and living apart from the other races in all the provinces of thy kingdom and their laws differ from those of every race. And it is not expedient for the king to tolerate them.” It was the old story, the root of many a future pogrom, of a race bound by Mosaic prescriptions, the observance of which isolated it from the culture in which it found itself.
Royal assent was given to this pogrom and the date of it was fixed by the drawing of lots. It fell eleven months later. This date was sent out to the hundred and twenty-seven provinces—including Judaea—and being a decree of the Medes and Persians it was as irrevocable as the commands of the Mosaic Law. The Jews had eleven months’ grace. They could not fly. The empire was too vast to permit escape.
Mordocai quickly saw that the hope of the nation rested in Esther. All fasted for Esther’s sake—and she appeared at her life’s risk by coming in the King’s presence unsummoned!
What a scene it must have been! The Oriental Stalin brooding in his inner palace with the plenary power of life and death vested in his golden sceptre and Esther praying: “Lord, wilt thou yield thy sceptre to gods that are no gods.” Two of her maids-in-waiting escort her—the one supporting “her dainty form”, the other bearing her royal train. Door after door they pass until she reaches the King’s presence, “where he sat on his royal throne amid a glitter of gold and jewels: terrible of mien... white went her cheeks, as she loosed her head, fainting, on that maid that stood by ... ‘Esther, what is amiss to thee? ... thou hast but to come near and touch my sceptre.’ And with that, for she was voiceless still, he raised his golden sceptre and touched her neck with it...”.
The remainder of the story is simply told. Through the influence of Esther (Xerxes would give her one-half of his kingdom for asking) another decree is issued permitting the Jews to defend themselves against the followers of Aman.
“In Susan alone they [the Jews] put five hundred men to death ... and the king said to the queen ... here is massacre indeed, if in all my dominions they have done the like. Tell me what more wouldst thou have me do for thee?”
This Old Testament Portia replies: “Please it the king’s grace let the Jews be free to continue this day’s work tomorrow; and let the bodies of Aman’s sons be hanged on gibbets.”
Mordocai wrote “setting all this out to the Jewish subjects of the King and bidding them observe both the fourteenth and the fifteenth year by year as the days of Jewry’s vengeance”. (Is it too fanciful to see the Mordocai-Esther relationship as a mirror of the Portia-Antonio one?). As the ten sons of Aman danced on the gallows the Old Testament Eve shared with Mordocai the day of Jewry’s vengeance—how far it all seems from that other gibbet when mother and dying Son pray for the executioners, “who know not what they do”.