Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Purim
During this week, Jews celebrate Purim. David Kopel has a nice post about the holy day, its meaning, and its origins, here. In the interest of ecumenism and charity, we might all take to heart this particular feature of the holy day:
On Purim, Jews are supposed to drink until they can no longer distinguish "Blessed be Mordecai" from "Cursed be Haman." Some people say that this means a person should drink until he can no longer do the mathematical calculations with the Hebrew letters showing that Mordecai and Haman each add up to the same value, namely 520. (All Hebrew letters have a numeric value.)
Other people say that because the blessing of Mordecai and the cursing of Haman both manifested God's goodness, a person should drink until he realizes the fundamental similarity of God's superficially diverse good works.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2006/03/purim.html