Q&A: A Question About the Book of Esther
A Question About the Book of Esther
Question
Hello Rabbi, I wanted to ask what you think about the prediction in the Book of Esther regarding Haman’s modern-day sons.
If you’re not familiar: in chapter 9 of the Book of Esther, when Haman’s sons are mentioned, there is a small “tav,” a small “shin,” a small “zayin,” and a large “vav.” In the year 5707, in the sixth millennium, 10 Nazis were executed by hanging. There are only a few dozen isolated small and large letters in the Hebrew Bible, so statistically this is extremely impressive. Another interesting fact is that one of the Nazis shouted “Happy Purim” at the moment he was executed. Another fact is that there was one more Nazi (Göring) who committed suicide, like in the midrash about Haman’s daughter; according to testimonies, Göring wore women’s clothing underneath his Nazi clothes.
Answer
I don’t see anything impressive here. If someone had told me beforehand that this was what was going to happen, I might perhaps consider it. The rest of these little divrei-Torah-style quips aren’t even fit to be said at a Sheva Berakhot celebration. Better to come up with a more successful quip.
Discussion on Answer
The connection is extremely tenuous, and at that level of vagueness you can connect anything to anything. You can give such biblical phenomena countless interpretations, and to be statistically impressed you’d have to examine other biblical phenomena too, to see whether similar interpretations exist there as well. In short, in my opinion this is meaningless. It’s the kind of quip that reflects a lack of statistical skill. As I wrote to you, I’m waiting for someone to predict such events in advance in light of the biblical phenomena, and not connect them to events after they already happened. That’s no great feat.
I moved over a comment from somewhere else:
In your opinion, you really don’t see anything unusual about this? Statistically it’s almost impossible for something like this to happen. Those small “zayin,” small “tav,” small “shin,” and large “vav” are the only ones in the Hebrew Bible, and it comes out דווקא in the passage about the hanging of Haman’s ten sons…
Do you think it’s accidental that דווקא in that year (5707), in the correct millennium, 10 senior Nazis were executed in the Nuremberg trials?
I’d be glad if you’d tell me why this doesn’t impress you at all.