Purim

  Since today is the Jewish feast of Purim, (the Feast of Esther) I wanted to post something fun on the subject.  :)
  I'm hoping next year to have people over to experience a small version of the holiday, which I was attempting to do this year... But life didn't cooperate.  :P

  Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.

  So the Jews adopted as a custom what they had begun to do, as Mordecai had written to them. Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur—that is "the lot"—to crush and destroy them; but when Esther came before the king, she gave orders in writing that the wicked plot that he had devised against the Jews should come upon his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows.

  Therefore these days are called Purim, from the word Pur. Thus because of all that was written in this letter, and of what they had faced in this matter, and of what had happened to them.

                                                                                    Esther 9:20-26
  
  There aren't many specific traditional foods eaten at Purim, except for Hamantaschen, (which means roughly 'Haman's Hat' or 'Haman's Ears', depending on who you ask) a fun, lightly buttery cookie, filled with different jams, or traditionally poppy seeds and fruit.

  There are several specific blessings recited at Purim, though;


Blessed art Thou, O LORD our God, Master of the universe, who sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us regarding the reading of Megillah.  Amen.

Blessed art Thou, O LORD our God, Master of the universe, who performed miracles for our fathers in those days at this time.  Amen.

Blessed art Thou, O LORD our God, Master of the universe, who has kept us alive and sustained us, and brought us to this season.  Amen.


  Here are some more interesting Purim traditions ---> The Four Mitzvot of Purim

  "I'm leaning on the ones before me, my father's father's dreams;
I'm standing on the top of their shoulders, calling the One delivering me.
There's a time to hold your tongue, time to keep your head down--
There's a time but it's not now.

Sometimes you gotta go uninvited,
Sometimes you gotta speak when you don't have the floor.
Sometimes you gotta move, when everybody else says you should stay--
No way, no, not today.
You gotta ask if you want an answer;
Sometimes you gotta stand apart from the crowd.
Long before your heart could run the race,
You were born for this.
You were born for this.

One step, one move.
Born to trust You.
Made to lay my
Life before You.
...You were born for this."

                                                          --Mandisa, Born For This