The Sanhedrin issued a formal letter to the Iranian people this week, making a claim that rewrites ancient history: the prophet Zoroaster, founder of Persia’s ancient religion, was none other than Mordechai the Jew— and the Iranian people are being called to remember it.
The letter, dated the 17th of Iyar, 5786, is signed “the Elder Brother, the Rabbis of the Mount Zion Sanhedrin Court” and opens with a verse that frames everything that follows: “Ve’amarta el Paro: Koh amar Hashem: Beni bechori Yisrael” — “And you shall say to Pharaoh: So says the Lord, My firstborn son is Israel” (Exodus 4:22). The Sanhedrin is speaking to the Iranian people not as a long-lost brother with a shared, largely forgotten history.
The letter arrives in the wake of Israel’s military campaign against Iran, a campaign the Sanhedrin describes in blunt terms: “In one day, the entire leadership of the Iranian regime was eliminated. Afterward, the entire air defense system was eliminated, so that Israeli aircraft flew safely in the skies of Tehran.” The Sanhedrin then states what it considers the only possible explanation: “Not a single Israeli aircraft and not a single Israeli soldier fell in this war. The only explanation for this wondrous phenomenon is that the God of Israel, Creator of the world, protects the soldiers of Israel and brings success to our wars.”
Current events have made the Persian King Cyrus the Great and his Biblical status relevant to regional politics. For Iranians, Cyrus the Great — Koresh in Hebrew — is not merely a historical figure. He is the founding father of Persian civilization, the king who in 550 BCE unified the Persian tribes and built the Achaemenid Empire into the ancient world’s first superpower. The Cyrus Cylinder, discovered in Babylon in 1879 and now housed in the British Museum, is considered by many historians to be the world’s first declaration of human rights — a document in which Cyrus proclaimed freedom of religion and the right of conquered peoples to return to their homelands. For Iranians across the political spectrum, Cyrus represents a golden age of Persian greatness: tolerant, just, and sovereign. His tomb in Pasargadae in southern Iran remains a pilgrimage site to this day, and his name is invoked constantly by Iranians who contrast the glory of pre-Islamic Persia with the brutal theocracy of the Islamic Republic.
The Hebrew Bible treats Cyrus with a reverence extended to almost no other non-Jewish ruler. Isaiah calls him Mashiach Hashem — God’s anointed — a title otherwise reserved for Jewish kings and priests. “So says the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him” (Isaiah 45:1). The Book of Ezra records that Cyrus issued a formal proclamation: “The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has charged me to build Him a house in Jerusalem.” Cyrus then authorized and funded the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon to the Land of Israel and the rebuilding of the Temple. No Persian leader before or since matched that record.
That history is now being deliberately revived. Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah and the leading figure of Iran’s secular opposition movement, has publicly aligned himself with Israel through what has become known as the Abraham Accords framework — and has gone further, invoking the legacy of Cyrus directly in pledging cooperation with the Jewish state. In what supporters have called the Cyrus Accords, Pahlavi has committed to normalizing relations between a future free Iran and Israel, explicitly drawing on the ancient bond between the Persian and Jewish peoples. “The enemies of Israel are the enemies of Iran,” Pahlavi has stated. His movement frames the Islamic Republic not as the heir of Persian civilization but as its destroyer — and sees the alliance with Israel as a restoration of something authentic and ancient, not a concession to a foreign power.
According to the Sanhedrin, the main story began 2,500 years ago.
The letter addresses the Iranian people directly through the lens of their own ancient history.
“To the sons of the Iranian-Persian people,” the Sanhedrin writes, “who approximately 2,500 years ago were led by King Cyrus, who is called in the Bible Mashiach Hashem — God’s anointed (Isaiah 45:1). Cyrus King of Persia recognized the importance of the people of Israel as the people of God, and by the command of the Master of the world, called the people of Israel to return to their land and build the Temple.”
The Sanhedrin frames Israel’s current military dominance not as a political or technological achievement but as a theological fact: “The people of Israel are the people chosen by the Creator of the world to fulfill His Torah and to teach all the peoples of the world how to walk in the good path of God. This fact concerns you especially — the Iranian-Persian people — and your history, as will now become clear to you.”
What follows is the scholarly bombshell.
The Sanhedrin’s companion document — drawing on research by Dr. Chaim Hafetz — argues that the Persian and Jewish historical traditions, long treated as separate accounts, are describing the same man.
The argument begins with chronology. Jewish historical tradition holds that the Persian Empire, as relevant to Jewish history, lasted 52 years — far shorter than the roughly 200 years recorded in Greek sources. Dr. Hafetz maps the two traditions against each other king by king and concludes that the Darius of the Greek sources is the same Darius who reigned after Ahasuerus, in whose time the Second Temple was built.
An inscription at Behistun identifies this Darius as “son of Vishtaspa.” Persian sources record that Vishtaspa, under the influence of his wife Hutaosa, was the first royal patron of the prophet Zoroaster. The Sanhedrin identifies Hutaosa with Hadassah — Esther’s Hebrew name — and states plainly: “The story of the acceptance of Zoroaster happened in exactly the same days as the Megillah.”
The name itself is the key.
Zoroastrianism is one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions, founded in ancient Persia and once the official faith of three successive Persian empires — the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian. At its peak it was the dominant religion of an empire stretching from modern-day Turkey to India. Today, Zoroastrians number only around 100,000 to 200,000 worldwide, concentrated primarily in India — where they are known as Parsis — and in Iran, where they are called Zartoshti. Despite their small numbers, their religious tradition stretches back somewhere between 1500 and 1000 BCE, making it older than most of the world’s surviving faiths.
The religion’s central teaching is the eternal struggle between Asha — truth, righteousness, and order — and Druj — falsehood, chaos, and destruction. Its adherents worship one supreme God, Ahura Mazda, meaning “Wise Lord,” and are guided by the principle of “good thoughts, good words, good deeds” — Humata, Hukhta, Hvarshta in the ancient Avestan language. Zoroastrians do not proselytize, maintain sacred fires in their temples as a symbol of divine light and purity, and believe in the resurrection of the dead, final judgment, and the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Their holy scripture, the Avesta, contains hymns called Gathas believed to have been composed by Zoroaster himself — hymns that, read alongside the Sanhedrin’s argument, sound strikingly familiar to anyone versed in the Hebrew Bible.
Zoroaster — in Persian, Zarat-Ustra — has traditionally been broken down as meaning “old camel.” The Sanhedrin rejects this. “Ustra is the name Esther,” it states, “and we get the combination ‘the elder of Esther’ — dod Esther.” In Greek he is called Zoroaster — a name that, the Sanhedrin notes, “even more closely resembles Esther.”
In the Megillah, Mordechai is consistently called Esther’s dod — her relative and guardian. “In the Megillah, Mordechai is called dod Esther,” the Sanhedrin noted. “And also when he was brought before the king it is stated ‘for Esther had told what he was to her.'”
The Sanhedrin is direct: “The name Mordechai could be associated with the Babylonian idol Merodach or Marduch. Therefore Mordechai preferred to become known by the name ‘dod Esther‘ — Zoroaster.”
The God of Zoroastrianism, the Talmud says, is the God of Israel.
The Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda — in Persian, Ahormiz — is explicitly mentioned in the Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin (39). The Sanhedriin quotes Rashi‘s comment there: “Ahormiz — the Holy One Blessed Be He is called thus.” Tosafot on the same page interprets the name of the queen Ifra Hormiz as meaning “grace from God.” The Sanhedrin concludes: “We find that the Talmud and the early authorities related to the worshippers of Ahormiz as worshippers of God.”
The name itself breaks down in the document’s reading as follows: “Ahura like nehora” — the Aramaic word for light — “and mazda like manda” — the Aramaic word for knowledge. Light and wisdom. “The Talmud there mentions that they attributed control also to the demon Hormin, and this was the error that spread among them over the generations,” the Sanhedrin said.
The parallels between Zoroastrianism and Judaism are not coincidental, the Sanhedrin argues. They are causal.
The Sanhedrin’s letter to the Iranian people makes this case at length: “In the days when the Jews were in Persia, the prophet Zoroaster was accepted by the Persian kings, who taught the Persians to believe in one God who created everything. All the core beliefs of the original prophet Zoroaster correspond to Judaism: the struggle between good and evil, free choice, the vision of the end of days, good thought, good speech, and good action.”
The Sanhedrin goes further: “Even the fact that the religion was transmitted orally and not in writing corresponds to Judaism, which at that time transmitted the Torah orally. Even the girding of the belt and the separation between parts of the body — its source is in Judaism and is documented 1,000 years before Zoroaster in the Torah of Israel.”
Scholars who noticed these parallels historically concluded that Judaism borrowed from Zoroastrianism. The Sanhedrin document reverses the direction: “The similarity caused some researchers to claim that this religion was a source for Judaism. But below we will show that the opposite is true. It is Judaism that was the source for the religion of Zoroaster.”
The Sanhedrin quotes Zoroaster’s own words directly to make the point: “‘Who established the paths of the sun and the stars? Who waters and feeds the plants? Who created light and darkness? Who enables dawn, noon, and night?'” The Sanhedrin’s comment is implicit but unmistakable — this is Jewish theology in Persian dress.
Zoroastrianism’s enemies were Mordechai’s enemies.
“The religion of Zoroaster had a rival religion called the religion of the Magi,” the Sanhedrin stated. “It was an idolatrous and crude religion, and its priests even carried out a revolt and seized power for a short time.” The document cites the historian Herodotus’s famous story of the “festival of the slaughter of the Magi” — and draws the connection directly: “This story is very similar to the story of Purim, and many have connected them. We find, therefore, that the Magi are the Agagites.”
Haman in the Megillah is identified as an Agagite—a descendant of Agag, king of Amalek. The Sanhedrin maps the two stories onto each other with precision: “They say that Zoroaster prayed that the king would move to his religion and leave the religion of the Magi and their priests, and indeed, through the influence of his wife Hutaosa, the king became his student and even spread his religion. When we understand that the Magi are the Agagites, before us is the story of Purim. The king followed Haman the Magian priest, and Mordechai prayed and fasted so that Ahasuerus would leave Haman. Through the influence of his wife Esther-Hadassah, the king hanged Haman and appointed Mordechai as viceroy.”
The Megillah’s most puzzling verse finds a new answer.
The Book of Esther states: “Ve’rabbim me’amei ha’aretz mitya’hadim” — “And many of the peoples of the land converted to Judaism” (Esther 8:17). The Sanhedrin raises the obvious question: “Did Israel truly accept those many peoples of the land as proper converts? After all, fear of the Jews is specifically a reason not to accept them as converts.”
The Zoroaster-Mordechai identification resolves it. “If we accept the identity between Mordechai and Zoroaster, we understand that those many peoples of the land who ‘converted’ did not accept upon themselves the 613 commandments and did not become ordinary converts. They accepted the Jewish faith in the Holy One Blessed Be He, abandoned their idols, and learned principles of Judaism that non-Jews can also fulfill.” The mass conversion recorded in the Megillah was, in fact, the mass adoption of Zoroastrianism — spread by Mordechai across the Persian Empire.
“The Megillah itself testifies that Mordechai’s fame spread throughout all the provinces, and that the greatness of Mordechai is recorded in the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia,” the Sanhedrin states. “We have not found this except if we understand that Mordechai is dod Esther — Zoroaster.”
The Sanhedrin summarizes its case in nine parallel points.
The time is identical — the era of Darius’s father. The religion of Zoroaster closely resembles Judaism. The name Zoroaster can be interpreted as “elder of Esther” or dod Esther, Hutaosa corresponds to Hadassah, and Ahriman corresponds to Haman. The God Ahura Mazda worshipped by Zoroaster is referred to in the Talmud as a name for the Holy One Blessed Be He. The enemies of Zoroaster, like those of Mordechai, were the Magian priests. The story of the king abandoning the Magi through the influence of his wife is identical to Ahasuerus abandoning Haman through the influence of Queen Esther. The emphasis on the battle between good and evil in Zoroastrianism parallels the Mordechai-Haman battle in the Megillah. The joining of many peoples to Zoroaster’s faith parallels ve’rabbim me’amei ha’aretz mitya’hadim. And Mordechai’s fame in the Persian records is only explicable if Mordechai and Zoroaster are the same person.
The Sanhedrin’s letter makes no effort to soften its conclusions.
On Persia’s Islamic conquest, the Sanhedrin’s letter states: “The truth is that at that time a spiritual regression occurred: the believers in the religion of Zoroaster deviated from the original words of their prophet and began to regard the evil force, Ahriman, as an entity with independent and divine power. The moment you abandoned pure monotheism and turned evil into a ‘god’ unto itself — your spiritual protection was lost and Persia was subdued. Only a return to belief in one God, as the original Zoroaster taught, will restore your strength.”
On Israel’s current success, the letter draws the contrast directly: “The people of Israel succeeds today in standing against all its enemies — fewer than 10 million people of Israel against a billion and a half enemies and additional billions of haters — and achieves great accomplishments, because it holds fast to the pure faith in the One God, Creator of the world, without partnership of foreign forces. As it is written: ‘Hashem badad yanchenu ve’ein imo el nechar‘ — ‘God guided them alone, and there was no foreign god with him'” (Deuteronomy 32:12).
On the Islamic Republic specifically, the Sanhedrin is unsparing: “Pay attention to the linguistic similarity between Ahriman the evil and Haman the wicked of the Megillah of Esther, and between them and Khamenei the Supreme Leader whom the people of God eliminated. The linguistic and essential connection between them is not coincidental. This is the same seed of evil that tries in every generation to destroy you and the world. The Revolutionary Guards cling to evil and chaos, to the destruction of the world, and bring the world into perpetual conflict and continual ruin. They serve Satan and not God. They advance evil and destruction and death, and not good and life and the building of the world that serves God.”
The letter closes with a direct call to the Iranian people: “We, descendants of Mordechai the Jew (Zoroaster), instruct you this day to abandon Islam, which sows murder, theft and chaos, and return to the path of your fathers. Leave them and fight them. Walk in the good path in which your fathers held, and God will be with you.”
“With blessing of peace and truth — the Elder Brother, the Rabbis of the Mount Zion Sanhedrin Court.”