Thoughts from an intern

Much of my job includes data entry, here are some thoughts that arise during the tedium:

• Good handwriting is not to be underestimated. I vow to be better myself!
• Really, this many people are still using aol and hotmail? Gmail is a minority in the world of sign up sheets apparently.
• Can't figure out if the mysterious oddly spelled last name is correct or the fluke of poor handwriting? Google it! Google has all the answers...
• People living around now are in the best situation in terms of getting awesome email names... soon every name will be taken! Or do email domains filter much like we filter through the cycle of life?

Essentially this blog ended up extolling the Google, oh well...

Spring has Sprung

Today the weather made a dramatic jump into the mid sixties, which left me feeling giddy on my way home after work. As I took my usual route from the grave yard I could't help but reflect on how it didn't feel like winter anymore...

The grave yard felt alive! The sun was setting and there was a bounce in my step.

It was pretty windy, but that only made me feel like a rock star.

Just two days before this is how I looked walking the same route.

I switched my iPod playlist from pleasant to FUN and jammed out to this:

Drinking on Purim

Babylonian Rabbi, Rava, said “A person is obligated to get drunk on Purim until he cannot tell the difference between ‘blessed is Mordecai’ and ‘cursed is Haman’.”

After having learned “the full” story of Purim I now interpret the mitzvah to get black out drunk on this holiday a bit differently. You see the story of Esther and Mordecai doesn’t end with the Jews salvation and peace in Persia, no it ends with the Jews salvation and then the total annihilation of their enemies (women and children included). Wow.

Perhaps we drink on Purim to drown out our collective sorrows for past deeds? We drink to the point that we can’t tell a difference between Haman and Mordecai to demonstrate that the same evil willingness to destroy existed with both of them, reducing them to the same person even without the aid of alcohol.

The holiday itself is a bit schizophrenic. A fast leads up to it – a sobering tool for remembrance and then a total loss of consciousness during the day itself – getting that drunk is never fun. Fun and games on the day of Purim itself aside, perhaps we’re meant to wake up with a really bad hang over the day after; nauseated by our existence just as our ancestors must have felt after they committed such atrocities.

Most of our holidays our about remembrance, but I have a feeling that Purim is about forgetting.