During these days in Israel, we celebrate Purim. It’s a holiday which commemorates the saving of the Jewish nation in ancient times. As usual everyone wore costumes representative of the holiday’s characters and ate "Haman’s ears" (Hamentashen). In our churches we also celebrated this Holiday.
The ministers at our church in Haifa (where one of our rehab centers is located) along with several of the students at our missionary school presented a very funny skit based on the story, told of in the book of Ester.
As the story goes, during a banquet in Shushan, King Xerxes commanded Queen Vashti to come to the banquet and perform a dance for the royal court.
But the queen refused to come and the king became furious and burned with anger. So he sent messengers all over his kingdom to find and bring as many beautiful girls to compete in a contest for the title of «Miss Persia 463 BC» and thereby for the king to choose a new queen. Meanwhile a little butterfly flew into the king’s room.
Mordecai comes to visit Esther.
Meanwhile Haman along with his army plan to kill the all of the Jews in the nation. Haman even asks the King to issue a decree to be issued that would justify destroying them.
When Mordecai hears of this decree he sends a letter to Esther and asks her to go to the King and to ask to go into the king’s presence to beg for mercy for her people.
The Queen comes into the king’s presence and he sees that she is sad. He offers her a sandwich with the hope that it will comfort her and put her in a better mood, but instead Esther asks him to come to a banquet she has prepared for the king and Haman.
Haman’s wife suggests to her husband Haman a clever way to kill Mordecai.
During the banquet, Esther tells the king about Haman’s plan to destroy her all of her nation. When the king hears of it he gives orders to execute Haman and save the Jewish nation.
Everyone is happy (except Haman) that the Jewish nation has been saved. During the skit’s performance members distributed «Haman’s ears» (Hamentashen) and sweets to the children.
After the skit we had a competition for the most impressive Purim costume.
We also had a children’s competition for the most impressive costume at our church in Krayot.
Several of the adults who attended the Purim celebration wearing holiday costumes also took part in a Purim costume competition.
On Sunday, in our church in Tel Aviv, all the children there wore Purim costumes as well.
The children were complemented for their dance performance at the church.
Happy Purim to everyone.
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