Today is the first day of Purim and the 30th day before Passover. Why do I say “day?” Jewish days begin at sundown, so today is Purim, but it began last night.
We are also 30 days before Passover, two holidays that could nto be more different than anything in the dominant Christian culture.
PURIM and Pesach are, along with Hanukah, celebrations of liberation and escape from persecution. A theme central to so much of Jewish history that it has become identified with the meaning of being Jewish.
The celebrations, however, are very different.
Hanukah is festival built around lighting candles, candles that symbolize the eternal light in the temple. The candles are lit and small presents given to kids. Songs are sung to celebrate the victory of Jewish guerrilla fighters against the Syrians. Call it the Fourth of July.
Purim is celebrated by eating sweet foods, especially hamantaschen. The real fun, however, comes from dressing up as clowns and making fun in the synagogue as the story of her seduction of the king so as to save the Jews, a story called the Megillah. Call it Halloween.
Then there is Passover .. the central holiday and motif of Jewish history. The holiday centers around family gathering to read the story of the exodus from Egypt. That gathering is called a seder and the book we read is called the Haggadah. Call it Passover .,. there is nor equivalent in Christianity.
Finally, for my family, these thirty days have a special meaning. We are now about a month before the date my father led his US army medical company into Buchenwald. Sadly my brother still is obstructing the preservation of the pictures my father took and doing so at a time when fewer and fewer survivors will ever have a chance to see the pictures.
Still there is sweetness. The seder meal includes eating a “sandwich” made of matzoh and filled with horseradish for bitterness and sweets to see the joy in escaping slavery. The sandwich is said to have been prescribed by Hillel, the teacher whose ideas are probably the basis for the sermon on the mount. My sweetness comes form the survivors I have been able to contact in the hope they may, once the pictures are released, will be able to have a good memory of my Dad.
A warning to the average reader: The author of this blog makes statements on this blog that are sometimes misleading and sometimes fiction. For example, he writes here that “Sadly my brother still is obstructing the preservation of the pictures my father ” Indeed, it is SMS who has held up the donation of the estate’s WWII photos and other memorabilia to a major University by (a) withholding some of the materials at his residence in Seattle — despite his signing off on an agreement to return them to Hugh and (b) failing to sign off on a Deed of Gift to donate the materials.