I’m going to a party with friends tonight (03/21). It’s a party to celebrate the theme of the Book of Esther in the Bible.
The Book of Esther tells how over 2500 years ago, Haman, a Persian dignitary, tricked Ahasuerus, his Persian Emperor into making a decree to kill all the Jews. Little did Haman know that unbeknownst to the Emperor himself, his queen was a secret Jewess. Hidden not for long, because at an opportune time she exposed the perfidy of Haman, and so Ahasuerus who could not reverse a royal decree, gave permission to the Jews to defend themselves. Until this day, every year Jews worldwide celebrate this major victory over that threat of annihilation. How do they celebrate it? For one thing the idea is to dress-up. Why dress-up? When we dress-up we conceal our identity and pretend to be someone or something else. Though she didn’t know it at the time, in order to save her people, Esther first hid her true identity from the Emperor. The name Esther is actually a hebrew/Aramaic word which means to “conceal.” Also, all throughout the Book of Esther, there is not one single mention of God. Everything seems to happen “coincidentally.” Coincidentally? Really? In my view, though God seems to often conceal Himself from us, boy is He ever so present to orchestrate things! There is another Purim tradition among the Jewish people. It is to bake and eat a small 3-cornered jam filled cooky which is called :Hamantashen, which refers to “Haman’s ears.” One day a German soldier was taking an old rabbi to the firing squad. The old rabbi started to snicker. “You arhe co-eing to tdie soon. Vhy do you snikkerh!” “Well,” said the rabbi, “About 2500 years ago, not unlike your Fuhrer, another head of state decided that they were going to kill us all. Today we celebrate his demise by eating a little cookie called after his name. I was snickering because I was musing on how we will call the cookies we will eat after you; Adolphtashens?” On another note, there a very eery event from the Nuremberg trials that relates the story of the hanging of Haman’s sons to the Nuremberg trials. Follow the link below if you want to know! https://unitedwithisrael.org/strange-parallels-between-the-purim-story-and-the-nuremberg-trials/
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
If you appreciate these articles, support their upcoming publication in a book called, "REFLECTIONS OF A FIRE CHAPLAIN"
|