Thought of the Week: Purim - 5777

PURIM AND PERSEVERANCE

The thirteenth of Adar was chosen to become a terrible day for the people of Israel.  A Jew-hater by the name of Haman desired to "destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews—young and old, women and children—on a single day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods."

However, due to the mercy of the Almighty, the Jewish people got the upper hand and uprooted all who hated them on the same day that the enemies had hoped to annihilate them.

Although we celebrate this miraculous turn around, we do not do it on the day of the battles, but rather on the next day.

In Judaism, we do not celebrate the death of the evildoer.  Ideally, we would want to see them live and repent.  What we do celebrate is Jewish survival.  By observing Purim on the day after the war, we are proclaiming that despite the fact that in every generation there are those who would like to see us vanish, we are around to declare that we and our message live on.

Every single Holocaust survivor is a Purim story.  Just as we celebrate the day, we celebrate the fact that we have among us people of courage and greatness that are here to tell a story of perseverance.

Shabbat Shalom