The Wonderful Thing About Purim

The wonderful thing about Purim
is Purim's a wonderful thing!
Haman tried to kill Mordechai
So Esther married the king.
They saved the Jews.
It was good news.
And now it's fun fun fun!
And the most wonderful thing about Purim.....

Is getting tons of food right before Pesach! What's up with that?!

חג פורים שמח

Taanit Esther is the International Day for עגונות - Agunot.
An עגונה is a woman who is no longer in a functional marriage and whosse husband cannot or will not give her a Jewish divorce - a גט.
ORA - the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot - is a non-profit organization which assists disputing couples in resolving their differences in order to effectuate a timely Jewish divorce in accordance with the highest standards of Jewish law.
I am a single woman living in a singles community among friends and we live our lives freely and independently with no one controlling our lives except us. We often take that for granted. עגונות don't have that luxury. This year, rather than going nuts on mishloach manot, I donated money to ORA. I chose ORA to remind myself and others that while I am having a super fun care-free happy פורים, there are women out there who are suffering tremendously and they deserve to also have a super fun care-free happy פורים.
For more information on ORA, check out http://www.getora.com/index.html

חג פורים שמח!

Thanx DS and ZK for the idea.

צדקה ממני*

I was playing with my niece the other day and somewhere, she picked up the word "hate" and was saying it about everything. She even said to my dad "I hate you". So I did my darndest to get her to stop. I said that's not a nice word. We don't say things like that. Maybe we don't Like something but we don't hate. And I made her apologize to my dad. And every time she would use the word "hate", I would try soooo hard not to laugh or smile - b/c she's so fun and cute and I can't not smile when she talks - so I tried so hard to keep a straight face and I would say something like "That is not a nice word. We don't use words like that. Maybe I hate the word hate, but we don't use that word. It's not nice."

After all that, I was explaining to my mom and the other grandparents that I hate when my name is announced in Shul. I just don't like the attention. I guess my niece learned a good lesson - and she taught me one also. She caught me and said "Doda, we don't use the word hate. Say you're sorry".
So I did.

*צדקה ממני. My niece is so smart and I love her.


*That phrase - "Tzadkah mimeni" - Basically, she is right and I'm wrong - is from Parshat Vayeshev (Bereishit 38:26) when Tamar proves Yehuda wrong and he admits it.