The grand 180-day feast hosted by King Achashverosh came to an end on this day.
Achasverosh miscalculated the start date of Jeremiah's prophecy which promised the rebuilding of the Holy Temple after 70 years of Babylonian exile. When, according to his calculations, the seventy years had passed and the Jews were not redeemed, he orchestrated this grand party to celebrate the "demise" of the Chosen Nation. During the course of the party he brazenly displayed many of the vessels looted from the Holy Temple by the Babylonian armies.
Links:
Esther 1 (For a vivid description of the feast.)
The Royal Feast
The Jewish community of York, England, consisting of 150 souls, was massacred by a bloodthirsty mob. Among the martyrs was the Talmudic scholar R. Yom Tov of Joigny.
In today's "Nasi" reading (see "Nasi of the Day" in Nissan 1), we read of the gift bought by the nasi of the tribe of Menasseh, Gamliel ben Pedahtzur, for the inauguration of the Mishkan.
Pesach is translated as Passover, but really it means to leap, to skip, to bypass all conventions.
When G‑d struck the firstborn of Egypt, He skipped over the houses of the Israelites.
He also bypassed nature--all the channels of cause and effect by which He generally conducts His creation.
And the Israelites, as well, when they followed Moses out into the desert towards the promised land, it was with a great leap of faith.
This is the power you are given on Passover--or Leapover:
At other times of the year, you can’t get from one to a hundred without going through all 99 steps along the way. You need to learn something new each day, gradually acquire good habits and drop bad ones. To slowly open your eyes to a reality much bigger than yourself and hope to leave this world a little more refined than as you entered.
But now you are suddenly empowered to skip nature, bypass who you were a moment earlier, become a new person overnight, and take care of the details later.
Passover is the festival of the quantum leap.