VERSION|0.5.1|SUBJECT|The Big Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, Baron Aldgate  |CONTENT|[b]Rating[/b] 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

[url=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap130222.html][img=images/2013/02/pic130222.jpg popup=false float=right][/url]There's a big Jewish festival coming up. Happy nearly [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purim]Purim[/url] everybody!

Purim celebrates the fact that the Persians decided not to exterminate the Jewish race. You can read all about it in the Big Book of Magic Stuff's [url=http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Esther+9&version=NIV]Book of Esther[/url]. 

King Xerxes initially gave permission to kill all the Jews, but then changed his mind and let the Jews kill anyone they liked instead. So they killed [url=http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Esther+9:16&version=NIV]75,000 Persians[/url] but didn't steal anything from them, so that's alright. Then we decided to have a big party every year to celebrate not being dead. It's for the children really.

Some cultures get stuck in the past and keep reliving old quarrels. Not the Jews. We don't have any quarrels with anyone. We just have big Jewish festivals to celebrate all the things that have happened in the past, because without remembering the past we will forget it and are therefore doomed to repeat it because we forgot it. But Judaism is not just a religion of the distant past. It's a religion of the near past, the present, the near future and the far future too. It's a religion for children. 

Won't someone please, [i]please[/i] think of the children.

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