![]() But the story between the decree of annihilation and triumph is quite different. In the end, 10 of the evil men get destroyed, and the Jews live to serve our Creator, another day. I’ll refrain from listing the details of the Jews and the Haskala, where Jews also went away from Torah to follow the dictates of the nations around us in large numbers, but suffice to say, both actions are reprehensible for a Jew who has a Torah to follow. The Jews were willing participants in this. Sure, in Persia, many ate their kosher food at the banquet of the king, but Mordechai told them not to go, and there, on what they thought was the anniversary of the date they should have been redeemed, they saw the holy items from the Temple on display, captured by the Persians who ate, drank, and saw the prophecy of the Jews as being unfulfilled. The setup is the same, and the end is the same – the Jews left the service of the Creator and that of the Torah in large numbers. So the connection is clear and even predicted in the Megillah, which forms part of the Written Torah, itself. ![]() In Megillah Esther when the 10 sons are hanged, three letters are written small, since the days of Persia and Media when the Megillah was written – Taf, Shin, and Zayin, corresponding to 5707. Even further, this corresponded to 5,707th year of the Jewish calendar. Take, for example, Julius Streicher, one of 10 Nazis hung, who screamed “ PurimFest 1946” just before his death. The connections are clear even from the point of view of the Nazis who clearly understood what Purim was. Neither was a pogram of a village here or a village there, but mass annihilation. At two separate times in history, a dictator basing himself on a breed of rationalism that saw survival of the fittest as paramount, sought to destroy the Jews, as the Jews represented the subservience of man to a Creator. The connections between Purim and the Holocaust are clear. The following is adapted largely based on the words of Rabbi Moshe Grylak in Mishpacha magazine, Rabbi Aaron Cohen of Kol Yeshurun in Passaic, NJ, and others. Bitachon – Trust that the Creator Runs the World.She too stood up to the king, realizing the risks, but ultimately her sacrifice paid off and the Jewish people were saved. The king’s second wife, Queen Esther, is known as the primary hero of the story, and one of the few female heroes in Jewish history. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to stand up to the most powerful man in the world, understanding that you were risking your life when you did so. When she refused to dance in front of her husband (the king of Persia) and his friends at a party, he sentenced her to be executed. As a kid, I always viewed Queen Vashti as one of the villains, but now I realize that she was really one of the heroes in the story. While all of this is indeed fun, what I find more significant about Purim are the women in the story, who stood up for their beliefs, despite adversity. To celebrate, people dress up in costume, drink booze, and eat a festive meal. Here is a link that tells the story in a nutshell. Most communities put on some kind of play (or “schpiel”) to act out the story in a lively way. ![]() Each year we re-tell the story of Purim, which is full of colorful characters and tons of plot twists. ![]() To give some background, Purim commemorates the salvation of the Jewish people in ancient Persia from the hands of the king’s evil right-hand man, Haman.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |