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**Rasputin** · 03-22-2008, 05:49 PM

چهارم فوريه 479سال پيش از ميلاد ( 15 بهمن) خشايارشا ــ شاه وقت ايران ــ كه برسرزميني از هند تا دانوب و از استپ هاي شمال خاوري آسياي ميانه تا ليبي حكومت مي كرد ، پس از فرونشاندن شورش بابل (عراق جنوب غربي امروز ) در سال 482 پيش از ميلاد و تصرف آتن در 480 پيش از ميلاد و باز گشت از لشكركشي به اروپا ، توسط همسر يهوديش « استر Esther» از دودمان شائول كه در شهر همدان مدفون است از توطئه هامان « بزرگ وزير » خود براي كشتار اتباع يهودي امپراتوري ايران آگاه شد و همان شب دستور لغو آن را صادر كرد كه در كمتر از سه روز ، اين دستور به سراسر امپراتوري رسيد كه با وسائل آن زمان ، ركوردي بي سابقه است.

طبق كتاب « استر » كه 24 قرن قدمت دارد ، هامان به دروغ از قول خشايارشا به شهربانان ايران ابلاغ كرده بود كه همه يهوديان ، ازخرد و بزرگ ، را بكشند. در آن زمان همه يهوديان جهان از اتباع امپراتوري ايران بودند، در قلمرو اين امپراتوري زندگي مي كردند و در وفاداري آنان به شاه ايران ترديد نبود .

خشايارشا ( پسر داريوش كبير و نوه دختري كوروش بزرگ ) پس از لغو بخشنامه «هامان»، وي را به دادگاه سپرد كه محاكمه و در شهر شوش ( پايتخت اداري ايران ) اعدام شد و از آن زمان تاكنون ، يهوديان هر سال به اين مناسبت جشن مي گيرند كه به عيد « پوريم » معروف است.

فیلم “One night with the King” در مورد اين واقعه ساخته شده است.

**Rasputin** · 03-22-2008, 05:50 PM

Memorable quotes

Mordecai: A drunken brawl is no place for a young lady of purity.
Rebekah: Then why's a good Jew like you goin'?
Mordecai: All the scribes have to go. There is war in the air!

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Hagai: Where are you from?
Queen Esther: I am... of the wind. Like the wind, blowing where I may please, and gathering where I choose.
Hagai: Well, we gather in an hour. Try not to blow away before then.

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Mordecai: You were chosen for a time such as this...

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King Xerxes: [Xerxes is returning from the training camp, having been gone for quite some time] Have you had a busy morning?
Queen Esther: Not as busy as it could get.

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King Xerxes: Of all commodities love is the most cheaply purchased
Queen Esther: If it is for sale, my lord, it is not love.

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Queen Esther: What made you come back?
King Xerxes: I saw them, I saw the stars.

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Mordecai: God, every day I pray for you to give me the paitence of Job, the wisdom of Soloman. And what do you give me? You give me the endless equivocations... of a beautiful, young woman!

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Queen Esther: If I perish... I perish.

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Queen Esther: You see me as a child? Well, you are mistaken, I am much younger!

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Mordecai: Why would they buy belladonna from you?
Jewish apothecary merchant: May they seek poison someone. Very deadly. Very quick.
Mordecai: You sold them poison? A Jew sells poison to the king's fruit tasters?
[grabbing the merchants face and shaking him]
Mordecai: Have you any idea for whom it might have been intended?

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King Xerxes: Tell me of your people, teach me of your ways
Queen Esther: My father told me, It takes the glory of God to conceal the matter and the honor of kings to search it out.

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Queen Esther: It takes the glory of God to conceal a matter and the honor of Kings to search it out.

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King Xerxes: Then marry me... And we shall spend an eternity discovering this truth... together.

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Queen Esther: Will you not join me in the palace? I could have you be named in any post you desire...
Mordecai: My Lord will take care of me... Do you take care... of your Lord ?

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Queen Esther: Let my life be given me, at my petition and my people at my request
King Xerxes: You demand me your life, and that of your people? My dear girl,I know not of your people, you have yet to tell me who they are.
Queen Esther: Have we been nearly sold as slaves? I would have held my tounge, This... This Haman wanted our blood, my blood, the blood of Jacob, your Jacob. Your Jacob was given a new name, Israel. As do was I.
King Xerxes: You... Esther, a Jew?
Queen Esther: Not Esther, my lord, Hadassah Batabihan ,Daughter of the tribe of Benjamen, Child of the most high God.
Haman, the Amelekite: Never have I heard I heard a more pathetic story in my entire life.

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Queen Esther: Perhaps, instead of asking questions of our trials, our trials are ment to ask questions of ourselves.

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Hagai:[listening to Esther and others read an Old Babylonian heroic poem from behind a pilar] Gilgamesh. In the original. I read translation, never the original.
Queen Esther: [now beside him, smiling] You read?

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King Xerxes: Suppose, my lady. A man offered you a kingdom.
Queen Esther: [almost in tears] The only gift I would accept... is your heart.

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Queen Esther: Please God. Look upon us with favor and turn this dungeon into someplace wonderful.
Queen Candidate: Is this the dungeon or someplace wonderful...

**Rasputin** · 03-22-2008, 05:51 PM

DON'T get your hopes up for "One Night With the King." It isn't about a hot time in the sack with Elvis. No, it's a dull time in the theater with Esther.

Esther (Tiffany Dupont) is a nice Jewish girl from ancient Babylon who becomes wife of Xerxes, king of Persia (an area now know as Iran), and prevents the slaughter of her race. (Nice going!)

Director Michael O. Sajbel has gathered what is sometimes known as a "cast of thousands," as well as Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif. The cinematography and sets look great, but the script is a bummer. It's overlong, overwrought and overblown.

**Rasputin** · 03-22-2008, 05:52 PM

The Jewish holiday of Purim, whose traditions include drinking, noise-making and the consumption of three-cornered cookies called hamentaschen, is among the most joyous of feast days. But there's not much joy in "One Night With the King," a lavish but listless retelling of the biblical story of Esther.

In the role of Queen Esther, previously essayed by Joan Collins and a "Veggie Tales" cartoon scallion, Tiffany Dupont more closely resembles the vegetable. The daughter of Jews slaughtered by the villainous Hamen, Esther conceals her Jewish heritage when she is drafted by King Xerxes (Luke Goss) to replace the unacceptably pacifist Queen Vashti. The part calls for a headstrong spirit, but Dupont's flirtatious flounce is better suited to "West Side Story" than ancient times. Goss plays Xerxes with the swagger of a salsa star, and James Callis' pallid Hamen (he of the triangular treats) is hardly worth hooting at.

In the Purim story, Esther, nee Hadassah, reveals her true ancestry to save her people from Hamen's genocide. Although the snake-snarled swastika Hamen takes as his emblem points up the story's historical resonance, the emphasis in "One Night With the King" is less on averting the Jews' annihilation than making the world safe for individual freedom. The film's Persian baddies are unrepentant monarchists, while Hamen slurs the Jews by equating them with the hated Greeks, whose seditious philosophy he summarizes as, "All men are created equal."

The attempt to yoke terror-era concerns to biblical lore is not entirely successful, but it is intriguing, if only because it answers the question: Why another version of this oft-filmed tale?

Although the story's ending is unchanged from the Bible, it rings differently here. Xerxes gives the Jews the right to fight back, further allowing them to claim their attackers' wealth and property.

Had Xerxes suspected what riches lay under that land, he might have been less quick to give it away. But to the victor goes the oil?

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One Night With The King (A Movie About Iran)

One Night With The King (A Movie About Iran)

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