{"id":242,"date":"2007-02-27T00:08:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-27T00:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/02\/mahmuod-ahmadinejad-new-haman.html"},"modified":"2007-02-27T00:08:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-27T00:08:00","slug":"mahmuod-ahmadinejad-new-haman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/02\/mahmuod-ahmadinejad-new-haman.html","title":{"rendered":"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The New Haman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is no end to the amount of homilies that rabbis will spin out of the story of Purim. Pending what\u2019s in the New York Times that week, Vashti, Esther and Mordechai all become transformed into real-life characters. Usually this sermonic game ends up with someone asking, \u201cSo, rabbi, who is today\u2019s Haman?\u201d Usually this crude question engenders an equally crude but far more dangerous political answer. God knows how many people have been labeled Haman who, in other contexts, would be seen as a Mordechai. Rarely do we actually have a real breathing Haman standing right before our eyes.<\/p>\n<p>This year, however, I am sad to say, but it seems there is such a man, the Iranian president <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad\" target=\"_blank\">Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. <\/a>What makes him today&#8217;s Haman is that his hatred is not just directed at Israel or Zionists but at the entire Jewish people worldwide. What his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2005\/WORLD\/meast\/12\/14\/iran.israel\/\" target=\"_blank\">Holocaust denial conference<\/a> testified to was that his hatred is directed at Israel, Judaism, and the Jewish people worldwide. (Those <a href=\"http:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/hasen\/spages\/810100.html\" target=\"_blank\">crazy \u201cJews\u201d<\/a> who attended his conference may have been circumcised but have lost their ability to be considered part of the Jewish people) Lets hope Ahmadinejad finds the same end that Haman found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is no end to the amount of homilies that rabbis will spin out of the story of Purim. Pending what\u2019s in the New York Times that week, Vashti, Esther and Mordechai all become transformed into real-life characters. Usually this sermonic game ends up with someone asking, \u201cSo, rabbi, who is today\u2019s Haman?\u201d Usually this&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The New Haman - Virtual Talmud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/02\/mahmuod-ahmadinejad-new-haman.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The New Haman - Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There is no end to the amount of homilies that rabbis will spin out of the story of Purim. Pending what\u2019s in the New York Times that week, Vashti, Esther and Mordechai all become transformed into real-life characters. Usually this sermonic game ends up with someone asking, \u201cSo, rabbi, who is today\u2019s Haman?\u201d Usually this&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/02\/mahmuod-ahmadinejad-new-haman.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-02-27T00:08:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The New Haman - Virtual Talmud","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/02\/mahmuod-ahmadinejad-new-haman.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The New Haman - Virtual Talmud","og_description":"There is no end to the amount of homilies that rabbis will spin out of the story of Purim. Pending what\u2019s in the New York Times that week, Vashti, Esther and Mordechai all become transformed into real-life characters. Usually this sermonic game ends up with someone asking, \u201cSo, rabbi, who is today\u2019s Haman?\u201d Usually this&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/02\/mahmuod-ahmadinejad-new-haman.html","og_site_name":"Virtual Talmud","article_published_time":"2007-02-27T00:08:00+00:00","author":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/02\/mahmuod-ahmadinejad-new-haman.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/02\/mahmuod-ahmadinejad-new-haman.html","name":"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The New Haman - Virtual Talmud","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-02-27T00:08:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-02-27T00:08:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/53c806e36632262087fa251c621f2bc9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/02\/mahmuod-ahmadinejad-new-haman.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/02\/mahmuod-ahmadinejad-new-haman.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/02\/mahmuod-ahmadinejad-new-haman.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The New Haman"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/","name":"Virtual Talmud","description":"Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, where politics and pop culture meet 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/53c806e36632262087fa251c621f2bc9","name":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/417\/4170a8452a509d8efe19496bf5d566e9x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/417\/4170a8452a509d8efe19496bf5d566e9x96.jpg","caption":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/author\/estern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}