Today marks the start of the ancient Jewish festival of Purim, which begins at sunset and ends at nightfall tomorrow. It celebrates the deliverance of the Jewish people from genocide in Persia. The story is found in the Book of Esther in the Old Testament. ‘Ahasuerus’ (Xerxes I or Khshayarsha in Old Persian) was the Achaemenid king of Persia in the fifth century BCE. He was a Zoroastrian who did not impose his faith on his subjects. The Achaemenid empire extended from Ethiopia to the Indus Valley across twenty satrapies or provinces. In 2005, I got to see the carvings...
Monitoring Antisemitism Intel
