Purim

Purim is a spring holiday that commemorates the Jewish community's narrow escape from collective destruction in the ancient Persian Empire, as recount...

For those who engage in a more fundamentalist reading of the Scroll of Esther, Purim provides an answer to the profound fear of hatred between faiths: freedom of the mind and the suggestion to laugh off tough times once in a while.

Purim points the way that beyond the give and take of the dance of opposites that is the nature of life, is the reality that God is beyond opposites and can be experienced directly in a state of pure, unfiltered joy.

It wasn't until I was an adult that I came to experience the deeper meaning of Purim. Our rabbis teach that Purim (a day of exuberant, drunken celebration) and Yom Kippur (our holiest day of atonement) have much in common.

The Purim story has a happy ending, with enemies vanquished and Mordechai replacing his adversary Haman in a position of leadership. People of faith have a responsibility to ensure that today's story has a positive outcome.

When do we cross the line into materialism or even gluttony? When does having more cease to add appreciably to human satisfaction? Let us cultivate a deeper awareness of our personal measures of success, and celebrate them together.

A careful study of the talmudic and halakhic sources reveals a clear ethic for taxation. It is the Jewish people's responsibility to manifest these authentic Torah values in the world.

In honor of Queen Esther, heroine of Purim -- and of her predecessor, Queen Vashti, who gets a lot less scroll-time in the Purim story but is no less fascinating -- here's a roundup of some especially badass ladies of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish legend.

The values of tolerance that the Cyrus Cylinder has come to represent today must be held high. Yet in doing so, we must also heed the voices of those who opposed Persia's imperial reach.

By Meredith A. Bennett-Smith Religion News Service (RNS) It's almost Purim, and Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb is feeling a mix of joy and dread. Joy...

We need to remember, but we also need to blot out the memory. We need to free ourselves from despair and darkness, and we need to find a way to bring light and joy and gladness and honor to everyone in the world.

One of the major mitzvot of Purim is giving gifts to the poor. We must respond to poverty through solidarity, identification, understanding and kindheartedness. But never through shame.

Fortuitously positioned as a harbinger of spring, Purim joins Mardi Gras and St. Patrick's Day to form a triumvirate of formidable fun. As a wheel in this tri-cycle of minor American festivities, everyone can feel Jewish on Purim.

Taking Purim seriously is the commitment to take the contours of our lives seriously, even its extremes, perhaps especially in such cases.

This year's Purim marks three years since I started my incredible journey of coming out. Until three years ago I struggled in isolation with my identity as a gay man and an Orthodox Jew.

By turning the day into a fast, the rabbis shattered this nationalist celebration of a military victory. They tried to teach us to take the contradictions of Purim as a profound meditation on our world, not as an incitement to murder.

By Lauren Markoe Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) Debby Levitt's four children are dressing up big time for Purim, one of the more raucous o...

Purim cautions us not to take ourselves too seriously but to take moral choices extremely seriously. Its strategy is to get us to laugh at facts of life that would otherwise make us cry.

Purim is a spring holiday that commemorates the Jewish community's narrow escape from collective destruction in the ancient Persian Empire. The word i...

American culture had definitively shifted away from the old stereotypes. Jews are no longer the Other. We are not strangers in a strange land.