Purim, a Jewish Spring Time Festival

"The joy of Purim demonstrates Israel’s eternal holiness." --unknown Rabbi

For Jews world-wide the upcoming festival of Purim celebrates the ancient Persian Jews deliverance from the wicked Haman. While the festival is ancient, it is little known outside of Jewish circles.
Esther, a Jewess and Queen in the ancient world, is credited for saving the lives of thousands of others. This joyous festival takes place in the early spring months and is determined each year by the moon as to its exact calendar date. In the Jewish calendar it occurs on the 14th of Adar. It will begin this year on March 15 of the Roman calendar..

We find details of the Purim story in an ancient text known as the Megillah. Esther becomes the Queen consort to the Persian king, Ahasuerus, in a tribute to her brother, Mordecai, who once saved the king's life.
In her day Esther was considered very beautiful. After the death of the king's first wife, Vashti, she is selected from among hundreds to be his consort.

The courtier Haman is charged with the responsibility of apprehending and executing those responsible for the foiled threat to the king. Instead he decides that there is an opportunity to exterminate the Jews in the Kingdom. Unaware that Esther is a Jewess, he launches his plan. Meanwhile Esther reveals to the king, her husband, that she is Jewish and that Haman plots to kill all Jews in the Kingdom of Persia. The king apprehends Haman and hangs him, thereby saving thousands. For this, the festival is celebrated with much joy.

The day includes the reading of the scroll of Esther, the blotting of Haman's name, games, merriment and a Purim meal which includes sweets and other delicacies. Also on this occasion giving to the poor and other charities is highly encouraged.

Several Jewish denominations have web pages with Purim themed information:

http://www.aish.com/h/pur/

http://www.uscj.org/JewishLivingandLearning/ShabbatandHolidayInformation/Holidays/JewishHolidays/Purim/default.aspx

http://www.reformjudaism.org/jewish-holidays/purim

Rumi Basics

“Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from tongue. If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is illumination of heart.” --Jalal al-Din Rumi

Some basics about the 13th century Persian (modern day Iran) mystic and poet Rumi, as he is most often called. First, in the book previously mentioned here, The Sufi doctrine of Rumi: Illustrated Edition by William Chittick it states that the text of this volume was first published in Tehran, Iran in 1974, the result of a doctoral dissertation; based on original research by its author, Chittick, who notes that his work on Rumi "is the best, primary English language source for entry into the rich symbolic world of Sufiism."

Chittick also notes that in his view, there have been a number of adept translations of Rumi's work into English, especially compiled as anthologies which have provided the English reader with a great variety of his work. While this has been a service, Chittick concludes that as for Suffism, many if not most, miss the mark. They fail to probe into the meaning of Rumi's words as an entry into the mystical world he illiminates. "They generally fail... to provide sufficient context to grasp what Rumi is actually saying." Chittick hopes his book will close the gap.

Already in the 14th century commentators were providing information as to Rumi and his meanings for those who wished to learn; unlike many Sufi poets Rumi does 'explain the meaning of his imagery and symbolism.'

Jalal al-Din Rumi is widely known in the Islamic world as Mawlana, our Master. He was born in Khurasan (a region of modern day Iran) September 1207; his father was a noted scholar and a Sufi practitioner. In 1219 the family fled, ahead of the advance of the Mongolian invasion; they resettled in Turkey.

In Turkey his father also held great esteem as a highly learned religious scholar. The family prospered there. For the young Rumi, who the West has come to know, at age 37 he met a wandering Sufi mystic, Shams al-Din of Tabriz, who likely became the greatest influence on his life. Learning at the hand of this Master, Rumi for the remainder of his life was transformed from an ascetic to a mystic poet. He was to train the great order of Sufis, the Mevlevi. He died in December 1273.

Recalling his father, Rumi, after his death, son Sultan Walad wrote:

Never for a moment did he cease from listening to music and dancing;
never did he rest, by day or night
he had been a mufti; he became a poet.
He had been an ascetic: he became intoxicated by Love.
'T'was not the wine of the grape; the illumined soul drinks only the wine of Light.

Reincarnation or Resurrection?

"I believe with complete faith, that there will be
"techiat hameitim" - revival of the dead, whenever it will be God's,
blessed be He, will to arise and do so. May His Name be blessed, and
may His remembrance arise, forever and ever."
--Thirteen Principles of Faith by Maimonides, Jewish mystic

God Is Near Us, by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, while primarily about the Christian practice of breaking bread in community, touches upon an important aspect of this practice, and the Christian teaching of the Resurrection of the Christ, completing the cycle of the Jewish Messiah, or saviour. In the "feast of the resurrection," Ratzinger writes first about the rebuke of Saint Paul upon his visit to the community at Corinth, and how it applies to modern man equally.

"When you assemble as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and I partly believe it, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized... do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?

What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. For, I received from the Lord what I also delivered [taught] you, that on the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, broke it [the Passover meal], and said, "this is my body which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me."

Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body,
eats and drinks judgment upon himself.

--Saint Paul to the Corinthians, the Bible
1Corinthians11:18-29

Saint Paul's rebuke applies to us, as the opposition of one another threatens to obscure the central mystery that is the Christ. Some nowadays argue that this ritual should not be elevated to a cultic practice as the Roman and Orthodox churches do, but rather it should be as the ordinary, the everyday, celebrated in the same way we live our lives.

This reshaping is then accused of puritanism, of calvinism, of poverty. Yet the event as described by Paul was a Passover meal; Jesus did not command his disciples to repeat the "last supper." Indeed, they could not; it was not possible. The meal was part of the annual festival of Pesach, Passover, a lunar festival with a specific date.
Jesus did not give a command to repeat this annual Jewish liturgy. So to enter into a blood relationship, in the taking of the bread and the wine, the disciples unite into a divine kinship with the Lord. By free will, they partake of his spirit in unity and wholeness.

This realization for the disciples was the result of the resurrection as both a historical and as an ultimate dimension of reality. The Christian account of the resurrection of Jesus, Ratzinger says, "offered the actual starting point for the Christian shaping of the legacy of Jesus. It was this that opened up the possibility of being present beyond the limitations of the earthly corporeal existence... The Resurrection took place on the first day of the week, the day the Jews held as the day on which the world began [time and creation]. For the disciples, this, Sun-day, became the day on which the new world
began. Its essential characteristic was now the celebration of the resurrection..."

Writing about the Resurrection, Protestant theologian, Karl Barth says in this book, The Resurrection of the Dead, that Paul rather, brings a "corrective" to the church at Corinth, scolding them; utterance and knowledge of spiritual gifts are to Paul manifestly no ends in themselves... no guarantee... that blameless, waits in the end." Appealing to the schismatics of Corinth, Paul also appeals to those who are among the cult of Apollo, to those whose belief lies not in the assurances of God, but in their own ideas of God. He exhorts them, you are not in the service of Paul, of Peter, of Apollo; on the contrary, everything is yours in Christ Jesus.

It is he, who upon the cross, declares his freedom.
Yet Barth, expounds at length about the "foolishness" on man, of their failings and weaknesses, about how they do not meet the Lord, nor share a great likeness to the Creator. Look, Barth posits, "Are not the position and counter-position in the resurrection visible here?" Barth says Christians are called as witnesses to the event, rather than participants in an ultimate reality as other Christ believers have represented, because if it is true that with the resurrection, appeared the Church, then the ends of history have commenced; if the gospel of a risen Christ is rejected, then there is rebellion against God; judgment and perishing come to rule, then faith falls back on itself.

God's wrath in the mind of some is the result. In short, Barth views the resurrection as a literal event, not historical, and not a vision or a dream. He says that man is not capable of knowing God through his own senses, because man is too puny to perceive such an exhalted being, except by the great and grand revelation of the god himself. The resurrection, in Barth's mind, is one such instance. And we are called as witnesses to believe.

Moving into traditional views held by other faiths groups, Mohammedanism
is one which holds sway for the Resurrection. Muslim teaching about the subject is discussed in the book, Resurrection Judgment and the Hereafter, by Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari. He writes, " After enjoying a brief time of life giving rays of the spirit, the body finds that its role is at an end. The compound nature of the body allowed it to house the spirit only for a limited time... The spirit being ultimately free of the body, eternal and ultimate, it is therefore the spirit alone which appears on the plain of resurrection..."

However, today this teaching is less favored among Muslim thought, writes Lari. There is however he writes of an enduring belief in the idea that "resurrection represents a complete and comprehensive return to bodily life, for nothing that pertains to man can ever be fully destroyed. Thus man resumes his life in the next world... his life unfolding on a more elevated realm than this world."

And finally, in the east, the tradition of reincarnation holds sway. While some have made the argument that resurrection came into the west from Jewish contact with ancient Persian (modern day Iran) ideas, whose citizens held strongly developed beliefs in reincarnation, its introduction to the Christian, via the Jewish world altered this notion.The modern notion of resurrection was born.