Two astronomers. Separated by only 22 degrees, 58 minutes of latitude, 33 degrees, 29 minutes of longitude, yet seemingly worlds apart. Their common goal: figure out the very nature of the Universe and its womenfolk.

Monday, March 05, 2007

Purim

This past weekend saw the festive celebrations of the holiday Purim. Like many jewish holidays, we celebrated the fact that some genocidal maniac tried unsuccessfully to murder us. In this instance the genocidal maniac wasnt pharoah, or nebuchadnezzar, but the agagite (persian) vizier Haman. Queen Esther - herself a jew - apeals to her husband King Ahasherous to stop the liquidation of all the jews in the persian dominion which he does - along with hanging Haman (and his 10 children). The Talmud commands (I kid you not) "that you should drink alcohol until you dont know the difference between cursed Haman and blessed Mordechai (Ester's father)". As you may expect this is a religious edict I can abide (and imbibe) by. The holiday is celebrated by the entire country getting into costumes and drinking like the Northern English. Its a cross between holloween, guy fawkes day and Fasching plus alot of drinking. Sponataneous street parties are thrown with live bands, illegal house parties charge admission, and all bars are open especially late for punters to practice their religion and get trollied. I was a chinese man and C a geisha. The weekend was great not least because there were ample parties all over the city and a great celebratory vibe.

1 Comments:

Blogger Rob said...

Noam, we need to see photos of that! I want to see you as a Chinese man :-)

8:34 AM

 

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