The Jewish people have been celebrating their
own Thanksgiving Day for centuries, long before the
Pilgrims experienced their narrow brush with ex-
tinction in Massachusetts. The Jewish version is not
called Thanksgiving, of course. Instead they call it
the Feast of Purim. And for good reason.
To discover why this annual holiday exists, we
have to go back to the book of Esther in the Old
Testament. Not only is it the one book in the Bible to
explain, or even mention, the Feast of Purim, it is
the only book of the Bible in which the name of God
is not mentioned--although the Lord's mighty hand
is visible throughout.
In the English language, when we take a word
and make it plural, we add
s or es--to do the same
thing in the Hebrew language they added
im. So the
plural of
seraph is seraphim. The plural of cherub is
cherubim. Even baal (a false god) becomes baalim
(many false gods).
In the thrilling story of Esther, a scoundrel
named Haman was plotting to exterminate all of the
Jews in the Persian kingdom. Haman was the royal
vizier to King Ahasuerus (we know him to be Xerxes
I of Persia), and with deceit and trickery that would
make
Survivor contestants blush, Haman managed
to manipulate King Ahasuerus into authorizing a
mass extermination.
Haman informs Ahasuerus that the Jews do not
obey the king's laws and that it would be in the king-
dom's best interest to get rid of them. He asks for per-
mission to destroy them, which the king grants.
Haman then orders the king's officials to kill all the
Jews.
To win the favor of the gods, Haman casts lots to
determine on which date the massacre is to take
place. The Hebrew word for lots was
pur. Since he
had to cast several lots to determine first the month,
then the date, they had to cast
purim (plural of pur).
So literally, with a few rolls of the dice, the date
was set for the extermination of the Jews: the thir-
teenth day of the twelfth month. All year long every
Jew in the kingdom marked off one more day from
their calendar until they would be butchered--what
a ghastly thought!
Ernest Normand � Esther Denouncing Haman (ca. 1915)
Imagine knowing that on a predetermined date thousands of your c
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