Some Things. Intresting Things. (Passover Part two)

Alright! Now for the greatly anticipated (well.) part two to my explanation of Passover!

Sorry it's a bit late. What with all the fun things I'm doing this week (Netflix) and the mandatory existential crisis (which I have every break), I didn't really get around to it (I procrastinated and then was too lazy).

Anyways, apologies out of the way! Here are some interesting points about the Passover Story!





First, why did the Pharaoh let a little boy (who was pretty obviously a Jew) stay on in the palace? Wouldn't a little boy be sort of a threat to a moderately power-hungry king?

The story goes that when Moses was little (say, four-ish) he was offered two bowls. One was filled with jewels, and one with hot coals. Like many small children, he started to reach for the shiny jewels, but then God guided his hand away, so that the Pharaoh wouldn't kill him, and he grabbed one of the hot coals and popped it in his mouth. This is also, incidentally, why Moses has a stutter.

Next; Moses killed that one servant for beating a Jew. That's not really okay, at all. Two wrongs don't make a right. So he fled. It's just important to keep in mind that Moses is sort of a flawed human person. Sort of. That's how I interprert it, anyways.

Also; When God speaks to Moses out of the burning bush, and is like "Go tell Pharaoh to let my people go!" Moses isn't too keen.

First, because Moses has sort of killed a man and exiled himself. Second, he's getting old. (Well, not by  Methuselah's standards, but still.)Third, he's got a stutter, and he just doesn't really think himself a good public speaker. But still, God decides that he is, in fact, important, and sends him off to go stand up to Pharaoh for the good of the Jewish people. But no pressure. To help out, God sends out Moses' brother Aaron to help out.
I imagine it went down somewhat like 2:06 of this video.  Well, the whole thing, really, if you stretch it a bit.

  

 Sorry, but that did apply. Well, sort of. Anyways.

Then there's the whole Pharaoh's heart was hardened thing. That phrasing is a bit weird, don't you think? That Pharaoh's heart was hardened, instead of it hardened. It sort of implies that someone hardened it for him. Like an outside power, i.e. God. 

Some people think that God is the one that hardened Pharaoh's heart. If so, why would he do that? That's like playing both sides in a game of chess. Why would God inflict so much suffering on both sides, on Egypt with the plagues and the Jews with the continued inslavement? Probably because he wanted to emphasize his power. Maybe the Egyptians weren't scared of him enough, or maybe the Jews lost faith, but for some reason God had to reassert himself as all-powerful. 

The other explanation, maybe more likely, is that the Pharaoh, in Egyptian mythology, is considered an incarnation of a god. If the Pharaoh is a god, he doesn't want to acknowledge that there's another, more powerful god out there, so maybe he was just trying to maintain his image for the poeople of Egypt. 

Or, the third explanation, is that he was just a meanie-pants. Either way. 

Lastly, the parting of the red sea. A miracle. Probably. Or just a myth. But actually, it could really have happened, naturally. According to this article, it could have been a really powerful wind creating two walls of water. Which is still, you know, a miracle. 

Anyways, those are some interesting things to think about relating to Passover. I hope you like them.

Frogs here, frogs there, frogs were jumping everywhere! (Passover pt. 1)

Get excited! Passover is coming soon!

Ya know, that holiday where Jews eat horrible, dry, bland crackers instead of bread for seven days. It's an experience.

I'm just kidding. There's a lot more details, so I've decided that today I'm going to tell the story of Passover. Nutshelled. So very brief.

Next week (when Passover is actually soon), I'm going to explain some of the good old Midrash-y details and interpretations. But right here is the bare basics.

This is a pretty well known story, so stop me if you've heard it before. Oh, wait, that's right, you can't! Oh, the joys of the internet! Mwahahahahhaa.

Ahem.

So anyways, a really long time, ago, there was this Pharaoh of Egypt. Jews were slaves there for a bit, and this Pharoh was sort of afraid they would rebel. So he decreed that all male Jew babies would be killed.

So then one woman, as it happens, gave birth to a baby boy. His name was Moses. She didn't want him to die, though, funnily enough, so she got his older sister, Miriam, to put him in a basket and drop him in the Nile river to float around for a while. As luck would have it, baby Moses was found by the Pharaoh's daughter, who was taking a bath. She thought he was so cute, she wanted to keep him forever. So she took him back to the palace. Miriam, clever girl she is, appeared and suggested that the Pharaoh's daughter get a Hebrew nurse, and so Moses's mom got to raise baby Moses.

Cut to a few years later. Moses is in his late teens, early twenties, and he sees an egyptian beating up a Sewish slave. In a fit of rage, he kills the slave, then runs away into the mountians in guilt. There, he becomes a nice shepherd and marries a shepherdess, Zephorah.

One day, Moses is wandering around, doing his shepherd thing, when he sees a bush that burns, but is not consumed. Weird. The bush talks to him, making him take off his shoes and then declaring that he is God, the God of Jacob and Isaac and all of those patriarchs. God then tells Moses to go to the Pharaoh and demand that the Jewish people be freed. Moses is confused, mostly because he's a random humble shepherd with a stutter, but God is adamant. So he takes his brother Aaron and goes to the Pharaoh's place.

When Moses says to the Pharaoh, "Let my people go!" Pharaoh almost agrees, but then his heart is hardened (I will discuss this next week). Moses does a fancy trick turnig his staff into a snake, but even that doesn't work, so God brings a plague onto Egypt.

The first plague is turning all the water into blood. This is very, very unpleasant, as you can imagine, so Pharaoh tells Moses his people can go. But then he changes his mind (because he's sooo changeable (That was a Sherlock reference. Deal with it)) and makes them all come back. Then God rolls out the next plague, which is frogs. It looked something like this:

The same deal as before. Pharaoh almost lets the Israelites go, but then his heart is hardened and he changes his mind. This process is repeated several times, with seven more plagues; lice, flies (or wild animals), disease on livestock, boils, hail, lucusts and darkness. Each time, the Pharaoh lets them go, then changes his mind because his heart is hardened. Finally, God brings one last Plague on Egypt--death of the firstborn. When Pharaoh's firstborn baby dies, he finally relents and lets the Israelites go. They flee, not even having enough time to finish leavening their bread, and run for it. They make it all the way to the Red Sea when the Pharaoh changes his mind (again!) and sends him after the Jews.

Moses (and God) have a few more tricks up their sleeves, though, and he parts the Red Sea with his staff. The Jews escape and the army drowns.

That's more or less the story of passover. I'm sorry that that was so brief, but I promise that that is because I will go into way more detail next week. There are so many interesting and different interpretations and explanations and thoughts and feelings about everything, which are so interesting. So be excited.

Sevivons to Play With and Latkes to Eat

Today is the first night of Hannukah.

I was going to write another post about Synesthesia, but then today we went shopping and there were Christmas decorations EVERYWHERE. It looked like Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer was flying too fast after accidentally eating some little Christmas elves and half of Santa's bag of presents and puked green-and-red Christmas festiveness all over the entire store. 

On behalf of my religion, Feh! Oy gevalt. Christmas is such a nudge. We Jews have been around for thousands of years and we get what? Bupkes! And don't even get me started about other religions!

Pardon my kvetching, but I felt extremely underrepresented. So today, I wanted to tell the somewhat little-known story of Hannukah.

Here we go:

A long time ago, around 168 BCE, some Greeks took over a Jewish temple and made it into a temple for Zeus. The Greek king, Antiochus, forbade them from practicing judaism and forced them to worship Greek gods instead.

As you can imagine, the Jews were not so pleased. They tried to rebel, but they were mostly struck down by the Greeks. Some of the rebels went into hiding, where they formed a great big, wonderful, and admittedly rag-tag group known as the Maccabbees. Perhaps you've heard of them.

Anyways, these Maccabees lead a rebellion and, against all odds, won their freedom! Then they went back to their temple, which was completely and totally spiritually desecrated and contaminated and defiled and corrupted by the Greeks and their pig-cooking, idol-worshiping ways. The Jews had to purify their temple with an oil-burning ritual; they had to burn oil in the temple's menorah (a candle contraption to measure the days that has eight candles, one for each day of the week and one to light the other candles) for eight days. They looked around, but they could only find enough oil to burn for one day. The Jews decided to go for it anyways, and, to their surprise, the menorah burned for all eight days!

This is not the hugest miracle in the Torah, as one might presume. I mean, Moses split the red sea apart and turned his staff into a snake. That's way awesomer than long-lasting candles. The story is less about the miracle of the menorah and more about the success of the Jews in standing up for their beliefs and fighting to gain freedom.  

But you would be right in guessing that Hannukah is not the most important Jewish holiday. The Christmas season has seriously overblown the importance of Hannukah as well as super-commercializing it. Hannukah gets maybe an enitre row in most stores, but Passover, which one of the more important Jewish holidays, gets a shelf of tasteless matzoh-related products and nothing else.

Anyway.

In honor of this minor miracle, which is still a miracle, we light one candle each night in our Hanukkiah, which are menorahs that have nine candles for the eight days of Hannukah. We also eat fried foods, to commemorate the oil that lasted for eight days, like Latkes (potato pancakes) and Suvganyot (jelly doughnuts). Yeah, Jews are awesome. And, if course, we play driedel. Dreidel is more or less a gambling game. You have a dreidel, a spinning top that has four sides. On each side is one of four hebrew letters; a nun, gimmel, hey, and shin. They stand for nes gadol hiyah sham, which means "A great miracle happened there." In Israel, instead of a shin, there's a pei, because their driedals mean nes gadol hiyah po, "A great miracle happened here". Basically, you spin the driedel, and depending on what letter it lands on, you take some coins from the center or put some in. Whoever ends up with all of the coins wins.

As much as I hate the main-stream commercialism of certain holidays and conforming to society, I love this time of year. I love pretty much everything about Hannukkah, especially latkes. I love that everyone seems to be a little happier and a little friendlier, what with Christmas on the way. And I love how there is so much excitement and anticipation everywhere, and a general feeling of giddy joy. Most of the time.

So happy Hannukkah, everyone! Or, as my family says, Chappy Chanukkah!

And just because I can, here's that song about Hannukkah by the Maccabeats. Remember this?

All Hallow's Evening

Last Wednesday, it was Halloween. You know, the holiday where small (and not as small) children dress up as frighteningly adorable things and threaten strangers for candy that they eat in small increments for the next five months.

But really? Why does this holiday even exist? And are Americans the only ones who actually go around in costumes and knock on peoples' doors?

I ask this because while me and my friends (yes, I have friends) were trick or treating, this woman from England took pictures and asked if she could post them on facebook to show her British friends what Americans do on Halloween. And it wasn't creepy at all. Just kidding, it was.


Halloween is thought to have originated either from Christians or from Celtics. Celtics celebrated a day from about October 31- November 1 that celebrated the end of summer and the beginning of the darker days called Samhain, which wast the first of four quarter days in their calendar. Samhain was also a time when spirits (both good and evil) from the Otherworld could come out and mingle with the people, so costumes were traditionally worn to ward off the evil spirits. There was a lot of door-to-door type things as well-- costumed folk would go around collecting food for the Samhain feast, little boys would knock on doors for fire fuel, stuff like that. Pumpkins may have been used to both represent and ward off spirits.

Following a Christian tradition, Halloween would be the celebration of the eve of All Saint's day, which is a day of a giant feast honoring all the saints, on November 1st. After that there's All Souls Day on November 2nd. It actually used to be on May 13, but they changed it to November in the year 609. Groups of mostly poor children would go souling, which is when they would knock on doors and collect soul cakes, which are cakes that people would bake for that purpose.

Because Halloween occurs towards the beginning of winter, many people think it has to with festivals and harvests, but these are also probable origins. 

Halloween is celebrated sort of differently around the world. Most places involve children dressing up or "guising" themselves in costumes. In Ireland, they have bonfires and fireworks. Because America trick-or-treats, a lot of other countries do as well. There are parties, bobbing for apples, cake, and pranks.

Apparently, the long-standing practice of knocking on someone's door and then answering it is an actual tradition in Ireland, originally called knock-a-dolly.

Austrians leave out bread, a lighted lamp, and water on their doorsteps to help welcome back dead souls.

Belgians light candles to honor the dead. 

Similarly in China, they put out pictures of their loved ones, light candles, and set bonfires in order to aide the dead's journey to the underworld and other such things.

France didn't celebrate Halloween until 1996, and only because it's an American holiday. 

In England, Halloween was mushed together with Guy Fawkes' night on November 5th, but now they have two separate days. They have a bunch of traditions on Halloween, including fun games and such, some of which can be seen in Agatha Christie's mystery, a Halloween Party. It's absolutely necessary that you watch it.

I'm just kidding, it's not, but Agatha Chrsitie (and, more importantly, Hercule Poirot) are fantastically amazing. Now that I'm reading about Hallowwen, this mystery makes slightly more sense. And Poirot is brilliant and Agatha Christie is brilliant and.......end rant. But really. It'll give you some background and baffle you with a bafling mystery.

On Guy Fawkes' day, the English celebrate the foiled attempt by Guy Fawkes and his cleverer accomplices to blow up Paliament by making bonfires on which they would burn him. This is probably my favorite holiday background story. Fun fact-- we get the word "guy" from Guy Fawkes because he was the fall Guy on whom everything got blamed when they discovered his plot. Kids also go around asking for money to buy more wood for the bonfire.

Bonus fact about ! I've never actually seen V for Vendetta, so this might be obvious, but the "Remember remember" rhyme from it is a children's rhyme about Guy Fawkes day. 

There are a lot more festivals that are celebrated on Halloween across the world, mostly to honor the harvest and the dead. From this (very extensive) research I have done, it makes more sense that we trick-or-treat, but I feel like we could have so many more interesting traditions that have to do with dead spirits and harvest. Oh well. If you want to know more Halloween traditions, you can go to this website. Or just Wikipedia it.


That's all. Since people in England seem to celebrate Halloween more or less the same as we do, I don't understand why that woman needed pictures I guess we'll never know. Now that I think about it, it probably wasn't a fantastic decision to let her photograph us, but I think my friend sort of knew her? So we'll be ok. I hope. Remember kids, don't talk to strangers unless it's a day where we celebrate ghosts! Stranger danger! Happy late Halloween and almost Guy Fawkes day to everyone.