Happy Purim!
Purim is one of only two Rabbinic holidays on our calendar. The other such holiday, Chanukah, carries with it the very obvious miracle of the single day’s supply of oil that burned for eight days. Purim, on the other hand, has no such miracle — the Divine Presence was so well-hidden that His Name isn’t found in the Megillah. The name “Esther” comes from the same Hebrew root as the language of the Torah in Deuteronomy (18:31): “Haster Astir / I will surely hide My face (from them….),” referring to what the Torah warns us will befall the Jewish people when they turn away from G-d.
Indeed, the events leading up to Purim involved the first plan to exterminate the Jewish nation — as we know, it was far from the last. The miracle of Purim is that the threat was averted, and ultimately that the Jewish people survived.
To this day, anti-Semitism rears its head in the most irrational fashion, around the globe… and yet the Jewish people survive. That’s the real miracle of Purim.
Today, the great tragedy is that many Jews don’t know what they survived for, what it means to be Jewish in the first place. That is why our work is so important right now, and why we need your help at this critical time to rework our websites into true agents of Jewish outreach in a way that the Internet has not provided thus far. That’s what we plan to do with the proceeds of our raffle, so please don’t miss the opportunity to win $100,000 while helping us!
Please go to our raffle page to participate!
And please take a look at our Purim articles at Torah.org, and listen to our Purim audio at TorahMedia.com.
Good Shabbos, and Happy Purim!
Rabbi Yaakov Menken
Director, Project Genesis – Torah.org
