Candy, Costumes, And Parties - Jewish Halloween EXPLAINED ⧸⧸ Learn About PURIM! 🍬🎭🍾
Episode Stats
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Summary
Purim is a Jewish holiday where we dress up like we do on Halloween and celebrate the holiday of Hanukah. In this episode, I talk about the story of Purim and how we celebrate it today.
Transcript
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Hello Classic Crew and welcome to today's video where I'm going to be telling you all about
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If you are new to my channel, here we talk about classic living and traditional values
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and I am a religious Jew so I like to share about my faith, about my culture,
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and that is what we'll be doing today. So if you would like to follow me,
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go ahead and subscribe and hit that notification bell and if you'd like to get some exclusive
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content not available anywhere else, as well as be a part of our beautiful community,
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you should head over to classicallyappy.substack.com where you will get access to my book club,
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my podcast, and weekly discussion threads. But in today's video we're going to be talking about
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the holiday of Purim which is just around the corner and the reason I called it Jewish Halloween
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is not because it is actually Jewish Halloween. The reason I called it Jewish Halloween is because
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it is a holiday where we dress up. So for people who aren't really familiar with the holiday they
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might think, oh it's just like Halloween but for Jews and that's not really the case but we do dress
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up like we do on Halloween. So I'm excited to get into today's video and give you guys more of an
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inside look on this holiday. So let's get into it. So I want to start off by talking about the story of
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Purim and then I want to talk about what we do nowadays to celebrate it. So the story of Purim is
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incredible and the fact that there isn't really a good movie version of it blows my mind. There was a
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movie made called One Night with the King which is not accurate to the actual story of Purim and so
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that's why I don't like it. You don't need to change the story of Purim to make it incredible and I think
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actually it makes it much weaker when you try and change the story but it is so fascinating. I'm not
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going to give you every single detail because it's long but it is amazing. So basically the story of Purim
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starts with Achashverosh. I'm going to be using the Hebrew names of all the characters. So Achashverosh
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was the king of Persia of 127 provinces and his wife was named Vashti. Now Achashverosh was holding
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a big party and he wanted Vashti to come down and parade herself. She was hanging out with the women.
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He was hanging out with the men. He wanted her to come down and according to the commentaries parade
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herself nude wearing only her crown and she didn't want to come down. There are other commentaries that
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say the reason for that is that she actually broke out in hives. Normally she would be fine with
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parading herself but she broke out in hives and even grew a tail and didn't want to show herself in
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that state. But because she had denied Achashverosh's request Achashverosh condemned her to death and she
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was killed. Well the next morning Achashverosh woke up. He was not a very happy fellow. He realized he had
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killed his wife and he didn't feel great about it. So he called one of his advisors who is called
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Haman. Now Haman approaches him and says you know what you should do? You should have all of the most
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beautiful women in all of your provinces rounded up, brought to you, and you should choose your
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favorite to be queen. Okay so this is all happening and as it's happening there is a fellow named Mordechai
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who will not bow to Haman when he passes. Now Haman's whole thing was that every time he walked
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through town, the cities, everyone would need to bow to him and Mordechai was a religious Jew so he would
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not bow to an idol, to a man. He would only bow to God and Haman did not like that. He did not like that
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at all. So he came to Achashverosh and he said I would like to kill all of the Jews and Achashverosh said
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okay well I will give you my signet ring. You can send out a letter with my seal saying that on this
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day everyone can kill all the Jews in their area. So what did they do? They drew lots in order to
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choose a day for all of the Jews to die. Now that is why this holiday is called Purim because Purim
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means lots and that is what determined the day on which we would die. Now Mordechai's niece is named
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Esther and Esther was beautiful and she was one of the women who was rounded up and brought to
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the palace in order for Achashverosh to see if he wanted to choose her for a wife. Now Esther did not
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want to marry Achashverosh. She did not want to be married to a king who was not Jewish and who hated
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her people. So she did not put in any effort to beautify herself. All of the other women were taking all
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this time and effort to make themselves beautiful. Esther did not want to do that and even without
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any of the beautiful accoutrements that all the other women had Achashverosh chose her. So now Esther
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is queen and Mordechai is going to sit at the entrance of the palace every day just to make sure she's doing
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okay and while he's sitting there one day he hears two of the guardsmen talking about and conspiring to
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kill Achashverosh. So he gives this information to other guards. They bring it to Achashverosh. It saves
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the king's life and he says I'm going to give Mordechai a reward one day for saving my life. Keep
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that in mind for later. The Jews find out that Haman wants to kill everyone. The notices go out
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and they come to Esther and they say Esther we need you. You're in a position to save us and Esther knows
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that this is a very dangerous situation and through the story she saves the Jews through her heroism.
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Haman ends up dying and Mordechai ends up rewarded for having saved the king's life. Now I just kind
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of sped through the ending there. It's fantastic. It's an amazing story and it is one of my favorite
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stories in the Torah because Esther is such a strong female role model for all of us as women but also
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Mordechai is an incredible character and we see the story of a villain Haman who literally only wants
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to kill an entire nation of Jews because they won't bow down to him. So this story is so
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inspirational. I highly recommend it if you haven't read it. Go out and read it. It is amazing. If you
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can read the original text it is just incredible and it inspires a lot of things for us to do to
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celebrate it. So you might be wondering why do Jews dress up on Purim? I have the answer for you.
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So Purim, one of the things that we celebrate on Purim is the fact that God's face was hidden in the
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miracles that he performed for us as Jews. This is not a holiday where you can see his miracles
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plainly and clearly. For Passover we have the incredible story of all of the plagues and the sea split
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in half. For Hanukkah we see how the candles stayed lit for eight days. There were things that were
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clearly miraculous. In the story of Purim, God's face was hidden. God's miracles were hidden which is
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a lot more similar to kind of how we live in today's day and age. God's face isn't often shown
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and it really has more to do with the miracles that are just hidden in everyday life. And that is
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something that is much more relevant in the story of Purim. Esther's name actually means hidden
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because she was hiding her identity. So because of that, we dress up, we hide our faces, we put on
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costumes to disguise ourselves in the way that God disguised himself while performing these miracles
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for the Jewish people. So what other ways do we celebrate the holiday of Purim? So number one is we
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read the Megillah twice. The Megillah is the story of Esther and is the story of Purim. We actually read
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the entire thing twice and it is really important that you hear every single word. So you go and you
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hear a rabbi read it aloud to everybody in the synagogue. And one of the really fun things for kids
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is every time you say Haman's name we yell and we boo and we hit the ground or we have something
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called groggers which make noise to kind of blot out his name and kids absolutely love that. The next
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thing that we do is we give charity to at least two poor people. We celebrate by having a large festive
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meal and we give baskets of food to at least two different people. Now that's different from the
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charity. The charity is one thing and then we also give these baskets which are so fun. You have to have
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there are certain rules for what you can put in there and they're often very fun and themed for
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each family. So growing up we would do ones that had a lot of puns and then we'd write like a note
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for why we put all of the different things that we put in the basket in there. And it's just a lot
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of fun and you drop them off at all of your friends houses and then they drop them all off at your house
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and that is the other part of Purim that can sort of feel like Halloween because often there's a lot
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of candy in these baskets and kids get a bunch of candy for the holiday similar to Halloween. So kids
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love Purim for this reason. At the end of the day they look through all of the loot that they've gotten
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from people in their community and they can choose out their favorite things. One of the fun treats
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that we make are called hamantaschen and they are triangular little treats. They're cookies and often
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they are dough with a flavoring in the middle like a jam, a jelly, or chocolate or something
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and they're very fun to make. And they are called hamantaschen because they are in the shape of the
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hat that Haman wore. So that is one of the fun things you can do as a family and that is the
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story of Jewish Halloween of Purim. I hope you guys learned something today about the Jewish faith
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and I hope you enjoyed today's video. So let me know in the comments your thoughts. What's something
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you didn't know that you learned from today's video? I'd love to hear. Thank you so much for
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watching. If you are new to my channel make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell
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Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye!