the whole Megillah

Seems like every year Purim gives me blog material. Last evening I attended my first-ever synagogue service—kind of an odd choice, making my first visit on the rowdiest occasion of the Jewish liturgical calendar, but, hey, I like to rock. I was treated to a full read-through of the Megillah of Esther, which took me back to my Sunday School days—I always found the only book in the Bible to not mention God by name to be one of its most gripping stories. (As I read along, I noted that the explanatory glosses in my copy, like the Baptist interpretation of my youth, stress that the absence of God's name in the text only proves that God is in control even when we're not aware.)

Not only did the rattles throughout the congregation thunder away at every reading of the name of Haman, the story's villain, there was a Haman effigy at the front of the sanctuary on a mock gallows, and every so often one of the children of the congregation would enthusiastic string up the hapless doll. Those bits I don't remember from Sunday School.

I was pleased to discover, as I followed along with the Hebrew and English texts on facing pages, that I can still recall enough biblical Hebrew from my half-assed study of the language ten years ago to make out the names of all the people in the Hebrew text. And you know, I have been told that, if I can learn Arabic, Hebrew will be easy by comparison...

peace for Purim

It is possible to imagine, though, that Iran's intermittently persecuted Jews, living today under a president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denies the historical truth of the European Holocaust while threatening a new Middle Eastern one, might see Purim not as a story of tragedy averted but as one of tragedy foretold.

It's the Purim break-fast, today, and Jeffrey Goldberg has a fantastic op-ed in today's NY Times where he draws the unfortunately too obvious connection between the Book of Esther story of Jewish genocide averted in ancient Persia, and the anti-Semitism of today's Iranian leadership.

But while I call attention to that, may I also call attention to a series of posts on Juan Cole's blog: "Peace and Love in the Qu'ran" (click on the numbered surah:verse links). Iranian extremism notwithstanding, I'd hate to think that everybody thinks about Muslims this way. Or, especially, this way.