Jewish Holidays

If we delve deeper, we will see that Haman’s decree actually stirred the singular quality, the segula, of the Jewish people. The decree made it clear that the Jewish people were willing to make great sacrifices in order to hold onto their faith. Nevertheless, they did not try to escape their Jewish destiny.

The joy of Purim expresses the eternal sanctity of the Jewish people. Even though this sanctity is sometimes hidden by our sins, it never disappears.

People customarily give charity in the month of Adar in commemoration of the half-shekel that each individual would donate to the Temple, in Adar, to fund public offerings.

The light of Chanuka becomes dark in Tevet but it never disappears.

The custom of all Jewry, since the geonic period, is to fast on the thirteenth of Adar in commemoration of the fasts that Esther observed before approaching King Aĥashverosh to annul the decree against the Jewish peopleand the fast that the Jews observed on the thirteenth of Adar of that year.

Even though the Torah commands us to wipe out the descendants of Amalek, if an Amalekite agrees to observe the seven Noahide laws, he no longer has the status of an Amalekite, and one may not kill him.

The Jewish war against Greek culture continued with its battle against Christianity, which is a blend of Jewish and Greek-Roman ideas, and continues today as well. The leading culture today is Western culture, built on the foundations of Christian culture. And so the points of difference that exist today between Torah and Western culture are also based on the points of struggle between Greek and Jewish philosophy.