Purim Archives - Rabbi Jason Miller

Purim begins this Saturday night and once again the Jewish people will tell the story of our salvation. We will listen to the words of Megillat Esther, the story of how our ancestors were miraculously saved from their tragic death.Indeed that story is one that celebrates life. The Jewish people were saved from death in ancient Shushan (Persia), as the story goes, because the heroes Mordechai and Esther rose up and saved their people from destruction.

As we are preparing for the Purim holiday we are also glued to the TV waiting for any news of the fate of those aboard the Malaysia Airlines Flight #370 which disappeared somewhere between Kuala Lumpur and its destination of Beijing. Oftentimes when a tragedy such as a plane crash or a terrorist event occurs there are those who claim that by some miraculous turn of events they evaded the tragedy. Sometimes these stories are accurate and other times they are debunked by websites like Snopes.com.

I learned this morning of a story that has been circulated on the Web about a Jewish man who tried to book a flight on that Malasia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, however the travel agent being an ultra-Orthodox Jew refused to book him on that flight since it would require traveling on Shabbat. (According to Jewish law even arranging for another Jew to travel on the Sabbath is in violation of Jewish law.) The story, as reported in a blog by Daniel Eleff, the CEO of online travel agency DansDeals.com, claims that his friend was the Sabbath observant travel agent who refused to book the man, whom we only know as Andrew, on that flight.

Purim is here! In preparing for my annual rundown of the top videos for Purim this year a few thoughts emerged: First, nothing really impressed me this year. Second, there wasn’t a lot of creativity (did a memo go out limiting people to only use Pharrell Williams’ song “Happy” and “Let It Go” — the theme from the movie Frozen?). Third, where’s this year’s contribution from the Maccabeats? Maybe they’re too busy touring around the world and appearing on TV with Katie Couric?

I’m hopeful that the creative geniuses out there will get working on next year’s Purim spoofs and parodies and come up with some fun videos that are more creative than the t-shirt above. It’s actually easier for me to choose the best Purim videos when there’s more to choose from. While it was slim pickens this year, there are some fun ones below. So Happy Purim… and here are 2014’s top Purim videos:

HAPPY Purim (by Pharrell)