Purim

As I have previously mentioned I am studying for conversion. The other day I was in class and the rabbi was talking about the holidays in detail, he had them all written down on a chart in order one after the other. I was late and missed the first part but I came in in time to hear about Purim. He asked the question, "What is the miracle of Purim?" Well everyone had a different answer; that we survived Haman's evil plot, or that Esther actually became queen, bla bla bla. These weren't the answers the Rabbi was looking for.

The miracle of Purim was that we acted on our own. Esther is the only book of the bible that does not mention God, sure you can say he's in the shadows changing things around to help us out but really he isn't in there. And that's the beauty of Purim we actually got it right. We didn't need God to do everything for us. Well that's to say that God had a passive roll instead of an active roll.

So I got to thinking that the history of the Jews is just like a life cycle of us humans.

In the Exodus we were children God had to do everything for us. He had to pick a leader, force the leader to talk, convinced the Pharaoh to let them go, and defeated the Pharaohs army when they attacked us. We did nothing but walk and wipe blood on our door lintels.

Then as we wondered around in the desert we were like two year olds constantly whining and complaining. God even had to hold the Mountain over our heads in order to make us except the Torah.

On and on throughout Torah we behave like children, God had to do everything for us and even had to punish us from time to time.

But when we get to the story of Esther we've grown up a bit. I'm not saying we don't need God its more like when a father is teaching a child how to ride a bike. The father pushes the child and then lets the child go, the child will go for a while then fall, without the father to hold them up and push them the child cannot stay on the bike. But finally the father lets go and the child rides forward and learns to ride with the father keeping watch and giving a little help when needed.

I thought this was interesting but that's just me.