“There is one people” (Esther 3:8):
Rava said: No one was ever as skillful at evil language as Haman.
Haman said to Ahashverosh: Come, let us destroy them.
Ahashverosh replied: I am afraid of their God, lest He do to me as He did to my predecessors.
Haman replied: They are “negligent” (yashu) of the precepts.
Ahashverosh said: There are Rabbis among them.
Haman replied: They are “one people”. Should you say that I will make a void in your kingdom, they are “scattered abroad among the peoples”. Should you say: There is some profit in them, I reply, “they are dispersed” [nifredu], like an isolated bough [peridah] that does not bear fruit. Should you say that they occupy one province, I reply, “they are in all the provinces of your kingdom”. “Their laws are diverse from those of every other people”: they do not eat of our food, nor do they marry our women nor give us theirs in marriage. “Neither keep they the king’s laws”, since they evade taxes the whole year by saying today is Shabbat, today is Pesah. “Therefore it does not profit the king to suffer them”, because they eat and drink and despise the throne. For if a fly falls into the cup of one of them, he throws it out and drinks the wine, but if my lord the king were to touch his cup, he would dash it on the ground and not drink from it. “If it please the king, let it be written that they be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver”:
And the king said to Haman, The silver is given to you and the people also, to do with them as it seems good in your eyes.”
[14a]
R. Abba said: To what can we compare Ahashverosh and Haman? To two men one of whom had a mound in the middle of his field and the other a ditch in the middle of his field. The owner of the ditch said, I wish I could buy that mound, and the owner of the mound said, I wish l could buy that ditch. One day they met, and the owner of the ditch said, Sell me your mound, whereupon the other replied, Take it for nothing, and I shall be only too glad.
“And the king removed his ring” (Esther 3:10): R. Abba b. Kahana said: This removal of the ring was greater than forty-eight prophets and seven prophetesses who prophesied to Israel; for all these were not able to turn Israel to do good, and the removal of the ring did turn them to do good.