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Haman Knew the Torah and Chose Genocide Anyway

Haman studied the texts, understood the law, and signed the death warrant for every Jew in the empire with full knowledge of what he was doing.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Minister Who Read the Books
  2. The Feast That Started the Rivalry
  3. The Letter Written in Every Script
  4. Two Dragons and the World Between Them

The Minister Who Read the Books

When Ahasuerus elevated Haman above all the other ministers, the book of Esther says only that it happened, not what came before it. But the rabbis who read the Psalms alongside the Megillah heard Psalm 13's exhausted cry as the sound of someone who had been offering wisdom into a void, and they reached for the darkest illustration they knew: what preceded Haman's rise was learning. The tradition recorded in Midrash Tehillim names the studies. Haman had been acquiring knowledge. He knew the structure of Jewish law. He understood what the God of Israel required and why. He was not elevated despite ignorance. He was elevated alongside understanding, and he used the understanding to sharpen the hatred rather than dissolve it.

That is the claim the Midrash makes, and it should stop anyone who finds the Purim story comfortable. The villain is not a pagan in the dark. He is a man who looked at Torah and chose something else.

The Feast That Started the Rivalry

The aggadic traditions surrounding the Book of Esther trace the specific fault line between Haman and Mordecai back to the great feast that Ahasuerus threw in the third year of his reign. The feast lasted six months and was followed by a week-long public celebration in Shushan. Mordecai attended, as did the other Jews of the capital. And Haman was already there, already watching, already cataloguing who bowed and who did not, already aware of the one Benjaminite who seemed to register his presence differently from the others.

Mordecai was a descendant of Saul. Haman was a descendant of Agag the Amalekite, the king whom Saul failed to kill and Samuel finished off with a sword after the battle. The rabbis knew exactly what the genealogies meant. This was not a new quarrel. It was a very old one wearing the costume of Persian court politics.

The Letter Written in Every Script

When Haman finally moved, he did not move quietly. The Book of Esther says he sent letters to every province in the empire, in every people's script and every people's language: to destroy, kill, and annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, on a single day. The rabbinic tradition in Midrash Aggadah focuses on the comprehensiveness of the language. Destroy covers property. Kill covers bodies. Annihilate is a word reserved for erasure so complete that nothing remains. Haman was not describing a punishment. He was describing a world without Jews in it, written in the idiom of every culture the Persian empire had absorbed.

The letter was a work of legal precision. A man with no knowledge of Jewish sources would not have needed that precision. He would not have known what words to use to close every possible loophole. Haman knew enough to write the warrant correctly.

Two Dragons and the World Between Them

The book of additions to Esther, preserved in Greek and known through the Septuagint tradition, gives Mordecai a dream at the opening. Two great dragons face each other, roaring, and the nations of the world prepare to destroy a righteous people. Then a small spring becomes a great river, and the light returns. The dream is a compressed version of the entire plot, but the rabbis heard in the two dragons a specific theological claim: the conflict was not accidental. It had been written into the structure of creation, placed there before either man was born, waiting for the moment when the descendants would act out what the ancestors had left unresolved.

Haman studied Torah and chose to be one of the dragons. That choice, made with full information, is what makes the Purim story harder than it looks beneath the costumes and noise-makers. Knowledge does not determine what a person does with it. It only removes the excuse of ignorance.

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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Legends of the Jews 12:19Legends of the Jews

After that, a grand feast for everyone in the capital city of Shushan. Now, according to the Megillah, the Scroll of Esther, the king wasn't trying to antagonize anyone with this party. But tensions were simmering.

When word of the upcoming festivities reached Mordecai, a wise and respected leader, he knew this was more than just a party. The Zohar, that foundational text of Jewish mysticism, often speaks of hidden intentions beneath outward appearances, and Mordecai sensed danger lurking beneath the surface. He urged the Jews of Shushan to stay away.

As Ginzberg tells us in Legends of the Jews, Mordecai’s warning wasn’t universally heeded. Many prominent Jews, along with others from the "lower classes," listened and fled the city. They chose exile over compromising their beliefs.

Not everyone could. Or would, leave. A large segment of the Jewish community remained in Shushan. They yielded to the pressure, participating in the celebrations. And this is where it gets tricky. We learn that King Ahasuerus, surprisingly, had been mindful of Jewish dietary laws, kashrut. He'd ensured there was no need to drink wine poured by idolaters, nor to eat explicitly forbidden foods, treif.

Why? Was he being benevolent? Or was he simply trying to remove any excuse for the Jews to abstain? The text implies the latter.

The really unsettling part? Haman and Mordecai were both in charge of the feast arrangements. This meant that neither Jew nor Gentile could excuse themselves for religious reasons. Talk about a conflict of interest! Haman, the architect of future persecution, and Mordecai, the unwavering defender of his people, were both entangled in this web of royal obligation. tension..the weight of it.

As we find in Midrash Rabbah, these seemingly small compromises can have enormous consequences. What starts as a "harmless" participation can quickly erode one's principles. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? How far would you go to fit in? What lines would you refuse to cross, even if it meant standing alone? And what happens when the very people you trust are forced to participate in something that feels inherently wrong? It's a question that echoes through the ages, as relevant today as it was in ancient Shushan.

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Chronicles of Jerahmeel LXXXIChronicles of Jerahmeel (Gaster, 1899)

Haman wrote one of the most chilling documents in Jewish legend. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, Haman composed a letter "with the consent of all the prefects, governors, rulers, and all the kings of the East," sealed with the ring of Ahasuerus. In it, he compared Israel to a great eagle whose wings once spread over the whole world until the Medes broke them. Now, Haman warned, the eagle was growing new feathers.

Haman distinguished his plan from every previous attempt to destroy the Jews. Pharaoh had targeted only the males. Esau wanted to kill Jacob but keep his sons as servants. Amalek pursued Israel but attacked only the weak. Nebuchadnezzar exiled them but promoted some to power. Sennacherib relocated them to a land like their own. Haman proposed something total: "to destroy and to blot out all the Jews, young and old, women and children, and all on one day, so that there be no seed left in the world."

He rewrote Jewish history from the enemies' perspective with deliberate distortion. Moses was a "wizard" who plagued Egypt through "enchantments." Joshua defeated Amalek by whispering spells. The Israelites were thieves who robbed their neighbors before leaving Egypt. This inverted narrative was designed to convince the nations that Israel had always repaid kindness with treachery.

The nations wrote back with an unexpected response: "We fear lest they do the same to us as they did to our forefathers. Whoever touches them touches the apple of God's eye. Their God has called them the stone of foundation, and whenever it is moved He shall replace it." Haman wrote again, arguing that God had grown old and weak, unable to save His people from Nebuchadnezzar. The nations finally consented. But Mordecai met three schoolchildren that day, and their Torah lessons gave him the answer he needed: "Take counsel together, and it shall be brought to nought."

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Chronicles of Jerahmeel LXXIXChronicles of Jerahmeel (Gaster, 1899)

The hatred between Haman the Amalekite and Mordecai the Jew had deep ancestral roots. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, Mordecai was a descendant of Saul, who had destroyed the Amalekites from Havilah to Shur, slaying more than 500,000 men, women, and children. Haman descended from those same Amalekites and nursed that ancient grudge against all of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin.

While sitting at the king's gate, Mordecai overheard two Persian chamberlains, Bigthan and Teresh, plotting to behead Ahasuerus and deliver his head to the Macedonian king, whose empire was then at war with Persia. Mordecai told Esther, who told the king. The conspirators were hanged, but because they were Haman's counselors, their execution only deepened his rage.

Mordecai remembered a dream from the second year of Ahasuerus's reign. A great earthquake shook the earth. Two immense dragons fought each other with terrible noise while a small nation lived among the watching peoples. All the surrounding nations rose to destroy this small nation. Thick darkness fell. Then Mordecai saw a small brook of water flow between the two dragons, separating them. The brook grew into a flood like the Great Sea, covering the whole earth. The sun returned, the small nation was exalted, the proud were humbled, and peace was restored.

When Haman's plot took shape, Mordecai told Esther to remember that dream and go before the king. Then Mordecai himself prayed with extraordinary intensity: "It is well known to the throne of Thy glory, O Lord, that it was not from pride or haughtiness I refused to bow to this Amalekite. I would prostrate myself to no being except Thy holy presence. But for Israel's salvation I would lick the shoe upon his foot and the dust upon which he walks."

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