Purim: the Real Ending

We've just passed the holiday of Purim, a fun Jewish holiday. If you don't know the story, here's a quick summary from Jewfaq:

The story of Purim is told in the Biblical book of Esther. The heroes of the story are Esther, a beautiful young Jewish woman living in Persia, and her cousin Mordecai, who raised her as if she were his daughter. Esther was taken to the house of Ahasuerus, King of Persia, to become part of his harem. King Ahasuerus loved Esther more than his other women and made Esther queen, but the king did not know that Esther was a Jew, because Mordecai told her not to reveal her identity.

The villain of the story is Haman, an arrogant, egotistical advisor to the king. Haman hated Mordecai because Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman, so Haman plotted to destroy the Jewish people. In a speech that is all too familiar to Jews, Haman told the king, "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your realm. Their laws are different from those of every other people's, and they do not observe the king's laws; therefore it is not befitting the king to tolerate them." Esther 3:8. The king gave the fate of the Jewish people to Haman, to do as he pleased to them. Haman planned to exterminate all of the Jews. [emphasis added]

Mordecai persuaded Esther to speak to the king on behalf of the Jewish people. This was a dangerous thing for Esther to do, because anyone who came into the king's presence without being summoned could be put to death, and she had not been summoned. Esther fasted for three days to prepare herself, then went into the king. He welcomed her. Later, she told him of Haman's plot against her people. The Jewish people were saved, and Haman was hanged on the gallows that had been prepared for Mordecai.

In this, as in most versions, the ending comes quickly. The King learned the truth, the Jews are saved and Haman is killed instead. Simple. But, the Megillah tells it differently.

See, in the Megillah, we learn that the King cannot so simply rescind a decree. So instead of simply saying 'I changed my mind, don't kill all the Jews," he made a new decree: that the Jews could protect themselves.

In Chapter 8, verse 11 we learn "that the king had given to the Jews who are in every city, [the right] to assemble and to protect themselves, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish the entire host of every people and province that oppress them." [emphasis added]

In essence, he gave them the right to the first 2 amendments of the American Bill of Rights: the right to assemble (and free exercise of religion) and the right to bear arms.

The Jews saved themselves by protecting themselves. All they needed from the government was non-interference, non-persecution and permission for self-defense.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Read George Bush More “Green” Than Gore at Gaypatriot.

Israel's Long Past With Terrorism

Every other week, I go to synagogue for a discussion group on the Parsha of the week. This week, we talked about what was happening in Israel at the time of the events of the Purim story (which happened in Persia). One of the things we read was the book of Nehemiah.

In Chapter 4 of Nehemiah, the Jews are trying to rebuild Jerusalem (which they have just been given permission to do in a previous chapter). Their enemies "heard that healing had come to the walls of Jerusalem" and "they all conspired together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to throw it into confusion". They tried to demoralize the Jews and, frankly, succeeded. Jewish leaders gave powerful speeches to hearten the populace. These speeches helped, and the people returned to work on the city walls.

But not quite the same.

"The basket-carriers were burdened, doing work with one hand while the other held a weapon. As for the builders, each had his sword girded at his side as he was building."

Sounds a lot like the modern state of Israel, trying to build a nation amidst those trying to destroy them.

Orson Scott Card on Instapundit

I was going through the various podcasts I'm subscribed to when an episode from the Instapundit archive caught my eye. The guest was Orson Scott Card, the author of numerous science fiction novels including Ender's Game.

I adore Sci-Fi*, but please understand: I like happy stories. Oh, they don't have to be so happy that there is no conflict or anything, but I want my main characters to be the good guys, my conflicts to be surrmountable and my endings to be more comedy than tragedy. It's just the way I am.

When I started reading Ender's Game, I knew instantly that it was not one of "my" kind of stories. And yet, I could not put it down. The emotional atmosphere of the novel made it a tough read, the kind that usually takes me forever to get throught. But not this time. The story was compelling, absorbing...I found myself drawn from one excruciating event to the next. I felt so much for the characters, I was forced to tear my eyes away from the pages to remember that it was just a book. But I found I needed to know what happened next, no matter how difficult the read was. I stayed up until 4 in the morning to finish it and was unable to stop thinking about it, was unable to even shake off the feelings from my reading for days.

I've never felt that way about a book, before or since. I've avoided reading the sequels partly because I'm sure they won't measure up and partly because, if they do, I will feel that emotional intensity again.

Whoa.

Second post in a row where I started to write about one thing and wound up rather sidetracked.

The real reason that I wanted to write this post was to talk about what he said during the podcast. Because it is incredibly relevent to current events and offers incredible insight. Guess I'll leave it for a sequel.


*And if you like science fiction or fantasy you HAVE to try out Escape Pod, a weekly science fiction podcast that takes good stories and presents them in audio format. It's free, but the authors get paid (through donations) so the quality stays high.