Get Drunk and Party!!...In Israel!!

I believe we all know that Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and other cities, is a big drunken, lust filled party.  But what's the reason for the party??  Because Lent is coming!  And Lent is the Christian tradition of giving up something for Christ to prepare our hearts for Easter and the celebration of what Christ did for us on the cross.

And the WORLD takes what may have started as a holy event and says, "Let's get drunk, fornicate and party...because tomorrow a few of us may give up alcohol for Lent!"

So is that just the "Christians" who use the holy days as an excuse to get drunk?

Nope!  Below are excerpts from a Jewish writer in the Holy Land of Israel who writes about how the Jews are partying for Purim!

Going to Israel during a Jewish holiday wouldn’t normally be my idea of a good time. I haven’t set foot in a synagogue since I moved out of my childhood home nearly a decade ago, and many religious holidays – at least in my experience – tend to put too much emphasis on repenting, and not enough on drinking, dancing and setting off fireworks deep into the night.

But Purim – a holiday commemorating a time when the Jewish people living in Persia (modern day Iran) were saved from extermination in the fourth century BCE – is different. The booze-fuelled celebration, which takes place on the 14th day of Adar on the Jewish calendar (sunset of 23 to 24 February this year), is like Halloween, St Patrick’s Day and New Year’s Eve all rolled into one.

So in attempt to be a good Jewish boy for the first time in a long time, I found myself wearing a sombrero and pink light-up glasses on a rooftop in Jerusalem’s ritziest neighbourhood, overlooking the lights of the stacked houses below, taking yet another shot of arak to shouts of “L’Chaim” (cheers, literally “to life”).

Before my arak-drenched boozefest commenced, an Israeli friend explained that there are three things you are supposed to do on Purim: read the Megillah (the relevant section of the Talmud, the central religious Jewish text), give tzedakah (charity), and throw on a disguise and proceed to do as the Talmud states: "drink until you can’t tell the difference between Blessed is Mordechai and Cursed is Haman”. Mordechai is the hero of the Purim story, and Haman, the villain.

Growing up in the Detroit suburbs, I had never associated Purim with drinking. It had always been a time for playful laughter and bobbing for apples, and the celebration was always reserved for synagogue. But in Israel, all these years later, Purim was all around me. It flowed out of temples and into the bars, in the streets, on balconies and rooftops. I learned that Haman was basically a biblical-age Hitler, and in celebration of being saved from extermination at his hands, people set off firecrackers, dance in costumes and drink quantities of booze that would have made Hemingway think twice.

No longer was it the exemplification of joyful innocence; now Purim embodied a new kind of spirit – one that had killer cleavage, a short skirt and cat ears. And it was way too inebriated to be walking in those heels.

If this is what religious holidays are like, I decided, sign me up.

Here:  http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20130218-a-shot-of-religion-in-the-holy-land/1

So sad!  He thinks REPENTING is a real drag....but boozing and partying is AWESOME!

Sounds familiar to the millions of people all around us too.

I am quite sure that God is NOT PLEASED with taking a true story from the Bible about a day when God delivered the Jews from genocide...and those same Jews have turned it into a day of drunkenness and debauchery.  A time to get so drunk you can't tell the difference between Mordecai and Haman.  A time to look for "killer cleavage in a short skirt" who is so drunk...that maybe you can "get some".

God clearly doesn't care for lust, fornication, drunkenness and making a mockery of His Holy days.

How many Jews in Israel have their hearts FAR AWAY from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?

What day is coming for Israel?

The Day of the Lord....a Day when 2/3 of the world's Jews will be killed.  A Day when "if those days were not cut short (by Jesus return)...no flesh would survive."

Everywhere in the world appears to be turning Godless...even right smack dab in the middle of Jerusalem.

Lord help us!  Lord save your Holy people, the Jews!