Happy Purim!

Happy Purim!
Purim, the Feast of Esther, is this coming Tuesday. Several of the women from Beth Tephila will be coming to our home to bake hamentaschen cookies that day. (The recipie for hamentaschen is in one of my previous year's blog entries on Purim.) We'll serve the hamentaschen we bake at Beth Tephila this coming Shabbat. We usually dramatize the book of Esther during Purim.



Since the first night of Passover falls on a Wednesday evening this year, we have had trouble finding a facility to use for the large public seder that we usually sponsor. Our congregation voted yesterday to have a small congregational seder at our home the evening of April 8th. We'll return to the public seder in 2010 since it will be a Monday evening that year.



I've had so much fun reviewing my beginning Hebrew the last three weeks. I started teaching Tano & Elli Chidwick the aleph-bet letters & their meanings, etc. for 90 minutes each Wednesday morning. We've been compiling a beginning Hebrew notebook for each of them at the same time. They are very attentive & participate well...even doing homework in between our sessions. We will finish in March. Last week I picked up a "pink-eye" virus from the Lolo Community Church nursery children. I had my eyes checked at the Florence Family Practice Clinic so I could get eye drops for my bloodshot & irritated conjunctiva. An LPN stood me down the hall from an eye chart & asked me to read line 8 on the chart. The line numbers were to the right of the line of block letters I was to read. I rattled the letters off. The LPN looked puzzled & asked me to read off line 9. I could see the letters distinctly & again called them out quickly. The LPN really looked confused now & asked me to point to the line I just read. As I pointed to line 9, all at once I realized that I had read that line & the previous line from right to left, like you do in reading Hebrew. Evidently my brain clicked into its Hebrew gear when it saw the numbers on the right hand side rather than the left as is more usual in English. I burst out laughing & explained to the LPN what I had done. We then continued with reading several of the lines from left to right. My sight was normal. My brain? Now that is another matter.



Our Neighborhood Women's Bible Study has only 3 more sessions before we conclude for this school year on March 26th. How I will miss this group during the rest of Spring & Summer! I may continue to meet with a couple of the women for awhile & study Ezekiel with them. So many Christian leaders are beginning to warn the USA of impending judgment, that I want to stay in the Word in depth all through the year.