Thursday, March 09, 2017

The (traditional) tomb of Esther and Mordechai

PURIM IS COMING: 2,500 Years Later, Tombs of Esther and Mordechai Still Standing in Iran (Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Breaking Israel News).
The burial site of Purim heroes Mordechai and Esther stands proudly in the heart of Iran, proclaiming the Jews’ Biblical victory from within their most prominent modern enemy. This contradiction, based on an extraordinary part of the Bible, symbolizes the peculiar reality of the largest and most ancient Middle Eastern Jewish community outside of the Holy Land.

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As usual with these things, we can take the attribution of specific tomb sites of biblical characters with a grain of salt. All the more so with the Book of Esther, which specialist believe with good reason to be an ancient novel rather than an account of historical persons and events. But the traditions themselves are worth keeping track of.

Past PaleoJudaica posts on the (traditional) tomb of Esther and Mordechai in Iran are here, here, here, and here.