From ancient Persia to modern Iran: The Purim pattern in Jewish history

It was forty-seven years ago at Purim that I arrived alone in Israel, and within a week I had a wife. It was also on the day of Purim that the Gulf War ended in 1991 after Sadam Hussein declared before the world that he would burn half of Israel. Little did he realize that we were already half burned by an eight-year drought. He launched his frightful Scud missiles at us and burned the oil wells in Kuwait as he left, pouring tons of soot into the atmosphere for a year that lowered the temperatures in the Middle East so much that we had the wettest year of the 20th century in Israel- and our drought was over. Israel was as green as Ireland, th eakes filled to overflowing. And Saddam was found in a hole in the fields of Iraq (formerly Babylon) just like his alter-ego King Nebuchadnezzar, with dreadlocks and fingernails grown out like claws, and Saddam, like the evil Haman who had called for the destruction of all the Jews of Persia (Iran), was hanged on his own gallows in Baghdad.

That same Jew-hating Haman was a direct descendant of Amalek, that trube of terrorists who hunted down the weak and and old stragglers of the Hebrew exodus, was hanged on the gallows he had prepared for the Jew, along with his ten sons, whose names are listed in the Book of Esther. In that list of the ten sons, three letters appear smaller than the others, and copied such by every scribe since, and even to the printed version of today. The three letters are tav, shin, zayin. In the ancient Hebrew there are no numerals, but the numeric equivalent of the Hebrew letters- aleph is one, beit is two, and so forth. Thus the letters tav, shin, zain describe the Hebrew year that would be 1946. That was the year that ten Nazi leaders convicted at the Nuremberg trials of crimes against humanity were hanged together, like the sons of Haman. The last Nazi to approach the gallows, Julius Streicher, recognized this, and shouted out in German, "Purim 1946"

And this very day as Purim 2026 begins tonight, we are fighting that same Haman in Iran who again declares "Death to Israel!" Now if the reader somehow finds all this of little interest, and but the results of mere coincidence, I would solemnly wish him only good health.