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Has it been 50 years since that fateful day in the spring of 1965 in Selma, Alabama, when racial tensions boiled over as the Civil Rights movement focused on the hardened segregation culture of the “Old South?” As the decades have passed, much progress has been made in racial relations in the South and throughout the country. The brutality of the opposition back then, and the bravery, naïveté and willingness by the marchers, who were seeking the right to vote, to confront centuries of prejudice is still shocking today.

Every year around this time, Jewish people around the world celebrate Purim—a holiday commemorating the time when Persian King Ahasuerus (traditionally identified as Xerxes I), extended to the scattered descendants of Judah’s captivity the right to defend themselves against their enemies. It was a momentous day, when a mighty world ruler—hardly a Jew himself—intervened against one of his own advisor’s schemes, and prevented persecution of the beleaguered Jewish minority living in his kingdom.