Monday, March 9, 2009
Purim
Was so much fun. Jonathan stayed home with the baby and put him to bed, and I went to the HUC service/Megillah reading/Purim schpiel. It's traditional that the 3rd year students write the Purim play, and we performed valiantly, if I may say so myself. The theme was "HUC Survivor," and my classmates and I dressed up and imitated professors in skits that culminated in voting people out of the sanctuary. The reading of the Purim story was great too; on Purim you have to read the whole Book of Esther out loud, but the holiday is joyous and funny, so you don't have to read it "correctly." Some people sang their parts in Hebrew, others read it in English, but one person read her part in Spanish, another was in French, the "5th Year Flinestones" read it in the voices of Bam Bam, Pebbles, and so on, Cantor Shore chanted in a chicken voice from underneath the chicken costume, and hence the evening went. At the end everyone headed to the local bar, but I came home to my loyal hubby, crying baby, and cranky cats. It was great!
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4 comments:
What an awesome holiday! Why doesn't Christianity have anything like this???
LOL no idea. Well - you can kinda claim Mardi Gras!
Interesting fact about purim that I heard, and thought you might find interesting:
(according to the gemara) a miracle occured and mordechai nursed esther... AND, 20 years later, they got married... leading to a halachic debate when, three years after that, she gets married to achashverosh.The sheaila is as follows: Is it a forbidden relationship? Answer: no, not for the most part, because it was a forced relationship.. i.e. SHE never went to HIM, but vice versa (and refusing a king, as we can see by vashti, really is a matter of life or death)... So then what happens when she went to Achashveirosh unannounced? (at this point in the gemara lecture, a girl turned to the Rabbi and said - WOW, so what really DID happen at that meal? LOL)... the answer is that through this union, the redemption of benei yisroel came, because Esther was willing to sacrafice her physical life (by going to the king unannounced) as well as her emotional life (because after she has forbidden relations with Achashveirosh, she can no longer be married to mordechai)... And that mesiras nefesh is what brought the geula.
:)
I LOVE these debates in the talmud... but in the words of my chumash teacher: the reason girls dont learn gemara is because they would never be able to just accept things... we would question every comma, period, and vowel ;)
Good shabbos!
-C
Chana -
1) EWWWWW!!! Incest!!!
2)Why can't she be married to Mordechai anymore? Abraham takes back Sarah and Isaac Rebecca after they are with other people.
3) Of course girls question things! My question is: why don't boys? And most importantly: why exalt Gemara if it can't hold up to simple queries? I respect tradition, but following laws written up by a bunch of 2nd century old white men is a very different story.
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