Haman’s Antisemitism: What Did He Not Like About the Jews?

Some scholars argue that the term antisemitism, which was invented only at the end of the nineteenth century, should be restricted to various modern ideologies that involve discrimination against Jews.  When dealing with earlier periods of history, they prefer terms such as anti-Judaism, animus to Jews, or שנאת ישראל—hatred of Jews.  In this essay, I am using the term antisemitism in its standard popular usage, referring to any and all forms of “hostility toward or prejudice against Jews or Judaism” (American Heritage Dictionary).

“The Excommunication of Hannah Arendt,” Elon’s introduction to the new edition of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 2006).

Editor’s note: For more on this, see Flora Brooke Anthony, “Egypt’s Attitude towards Foreigners,” TheTorah.com (2016). 

On the date of composition of Esther, see, for example, Carey A. Moore, Esther (Anchor Bible Series; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), LVII-LX; Adele Berlin, The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther (Philadelphia: JPS, 2001), xli-xliii; and Jean-Daniel Macchi, Le Livre D’Esther (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2016).

Later rabbis had difficulty understanding this text since standard halakhah does permit bowing down to a monarch or his representative.  A variety of Jewish answers were given to this problem, most commonly that Haman had declared himself a god.  See b. Megillah 19a and Rashi’s commentary to Esther 3:2. See also discussion in Rachel Adelman, “Why Did Mordecai not Bow Down to Haman?” TheTorah.com (2015). 

See Michael Fox, Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther, second edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 45.  Fox argues that it would be difficult to attribute “antisemitic maliciousness” to the colleagues since they attempted to reason with Mordecai (3:4a) for a number of days before they told Haman.

Fox, ibid., p. 46, writes: “His motive is simple and petty: revenge for a personal insult.  Haman excels only in the magnitude of his drives.  In his arrogance he must do things, however petty, in a grand way, so he decides to exterminate all of Mordecai’s people in Xerxes’ entire kingdom.”

Editor’s note: For more on this see, Marc Zvi Brettler, “Megillat Esther: Reversing the Legacy of King Saul.”  

Cf. Berlin, pp. 80-81.  She prefers the translation “identified themselves with the Jews,” i.e. sided with the Jews. JPS reads “professed to be Jews” which leaves open the question of whether this phrase means “pretended to be Jews” or “became Jews.” 

For an introduction to this text, see Aaron Koller, “A More Religious Megillat Esther,”TheTorah.com (2014).

This addition to the book of Esther is found in the Septuagint between verses 13 and 14 of Esther 3. In the King James Version, the verses quoted are labelled Esther 13:4-5.  The translation above is from the The Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).

Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 208.

 Antiquities of the Jews 11: 212-213, Ralph Marcus translation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 417, cited by Schäfer, ibid.  In the Hebrew translation of Abraham Schalit (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1963) the passage reads in part: אויב עמך וכל הבריות במידותיו ובמנהגיו.

Schäfer ibid.

The opening of this passage is very creative. The king tells Haman that he is worried that the Jewish God might intervene on the Jews’ behalf as in past eras of history.  Haman retorts that since the Jews have become lax in their observance of halakhah, God’s intervention is not to be feared.  (The phrase attributed to Haman, ישנו מן המצוות [they have become negligent or “sleepy” in their performance of the commandments] is a play on the language of Scripture ישנו עם אחד [there is a certain people].) Haman continues: “Should you argue that you [the king] receive benefit from them, it is not the case.  They are like mules, producing nothing.”  (He uses the rabbinic Hebrew word for mule, פרדה, playing on the accusation against the Jews in the same verse, that they are מפרד [separate].)

I have translated the difficult Aramaic phrase, דמפקי לכולא שתא בשה”י פה”י, according to Rashi’s explanation.

Alluding to the rabbinic rules of setam yeinam, which would require a Jew to throw away wine touched by an idolater.

Translation mine. The midrash is cited by Moshe David Herr, “The Sages’ Reaction to the Antisemitism in the Hellenistic-Roman World,” in Shmuel Almog ed., Antisemitism Through the Ages, translated by Nathan Reisner (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), p. 28.

In a forthcoming article in a volume on antisemitism edited by Kalman Weiser, Scott Ury and Sol Goldberg I expand on this shift in rabbinic thinking.

In his comprehensive study of how medieval Jews read the book of Esther, Barry Walfish categorizes medieval Jewish interpretations of Haman’s hostility to the Jews into social, religious, economic or political reasons (or some combination of those factors). Barry Walfish, Esther in Medieval Garb: Jewish Interpretations of the Book of Esther in the Middle Ages (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 143-155.

Scholars do not agree about the provenance of this work.  See Yehuda Komlosh, “Targum Sheni,” Encyclopedia Judaica, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 19 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), pp. 513-515.

Presumably by using the river as a miqveh.

This example seems artificial and may be an attempt to imply that some or most of the allegations are false. The same is true of the next example with hoshanot, which makes the gentile accusers seem almost paranoid.

Quoted (approvingly!) by Lewis Bayles Patton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Esther (The International Critical Commentary [ICC]; New York: Scribner, 1908), p. 96.

Elliott Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 23-45.  Horowitz also outlines Jewish opposition to and embarrassment about the book of Esther.

Patton, ibid., 96-97.

Cited by Horowitz, p. 41.