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Where do find Haman alluded to in
the Torah? It is in the verse [Genesis 3:11]: "Did you eat
from (hamin, the same consonants as the name "Haman") the
tree which I commanded you not to eat?" Babylonian Talmud Hullin
139b
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Rabbi Aharon Kotler explained that
our Sages wish to convey a substantive connection between Haman and the Tree of
Knowledge.
Haman should have felt exalted, being
the second most powerful person in the vast Persian empire, blessed with great
wealth and "multitude of children” [Esther 5:11], yet there was one thing
which he allowed to destroy his life (in Haman's own words [ibid. v. 13]:
"all this [wealth, power and children] avails me nothing") : the fact
that Mordechai refused to bow to him.
Haman's situation was an exact
parallel to that of Adam and Eve in Eden: God permitted them everything in the
garden, except for the Tree of Knowledge. Yet, instead of focusing on all the
good they were granted by the Creator, the primal couple was unable to resist
the one thing that God had forbidden them.
Both in the case of Haman and that of
Adam and Eve, the failure to appreciate the good and the positive had far
reaching effects.
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