In a few days we celebrate Purim.Purim was always the happiest and one of my favorite holidays.It brings happy childhood memories.Good morning everyone 🖖Purim, the holiday that celebrates Jewish community coming close to annihilation and fighting, and winning, and surviving, and celebrating this spectacular event for over thousand years.Very much what we are going through at the moment.As the story goes…a long time ago in Persia lived a king Ahashverosh.He was a silly king who only valued his needs and his wants.He was surrounded by the yes men and every whim of his became a law….even to his own detriment.He dismissed his beautiful wife Vashti because she disobeyed him and was miserable as a result of his own actions.His advisers suggested he holds a beauty pageant of sorts and chooses a new wife.And so he did.Ester, who on the advice of her uncle Mordechai entered and won the contest became a new queen.Ester kept her Jewishness a secret because there never been a time in our history when it was safe to be a Jew for any length of time.The king fell in love with his new Queen.Mordecai has an interesting part to play in a story. At some point he overheard an assassination plot against the king and warned him.On the other hand he refused to bow to the grand visir, the head advisor to the king who basically ruled in kings name.The name of the visir was Haman (at whose name we make noise because he is evil impersonated). Haman (!!!) spread the usual lies to the king about the Jews and asked for the final solution.He wanted to rid the land of the Jews.(Let me point out that today, outside of Israel 🇮🇱, Middle East where there were huge Jewish communities for centuries is practically devoid of the Jews). The king gave permission to the elimination of the whole Jewish community of Persia.Haman (!!!) threw purim (lots) to determine a date and it fell on 13th of Adar.By the royal decree the Jews were to be killed on that date.All the Jews…women, children and men.No matter if they were liked or disliked by the community at large.No matter if they bowed to Haman (!!!) or were opposed to him.They were to be killed.That they were Jews was crime enough.To learn the Stoty of Purim one can read Megillah (the book of Ester) in the Torah.Jewish people read it every year on Purim.Ester, despite the danger to herself by breaking the law forbidding anyone to approach the king and by revealing that she was a Jew, swayed the king and elicited from him another decree.The decree allowing Jewish people to fight against marauders who came to destroy them.Interesting that that the first decree was not revoked but a new one was created instead.And so the Jewish community fought anyone who wanted to cause its demise.And Haman (!!!) was hanged on a scaffold he had prepared for Mordecai.So, not for the first time the safety of the Jewish community depends on a silly ruler.Not for the first time the evil decrees aren’t overturned but we are given the right and the ability to fight it and to defend ourselves.I hope that this time we will also succeed and be victorious.Our very future depends on it.Chug Purim Sameach 🖖Purim, papercut collage.