This is the Baymont podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we discuss the book of Esther and the story that lies behind the celebration of Perum, which as we record was very recent.

By the time you listen to this, it will be a little ways away, but it wasn't just a couple weeks ago of that.

In February, we began March 28th, March 1st. That was our celebration. I got to celebrate at home with my family. It was a little less academic, but maybe more meaningful, appropriate.

It's good. How they would have done it, probably. Perhaps. It's definitely better for my kids. As my kids are getting older and older, I'm enjoying that more and more and more. They can engage the story as thinkers and hear us a little bit better. It's a lot of fun.

Before I had come to your class, I'd never even heard of Perum. Do you want to give some of the listeners who might not be familiar with the word or the celebration, whatever you want to call it?

It is, in a sense, a biblical festival. By that, I would mean it's a festival based off of biblical story, biblical narrative. On the other hand, it's not a biblical festival. It's not one of the Levitical festivals. When you read in the Torah, God ordains these celebrations in the law of Moshe from Sinai.

That would include Passover, a parent who you're talking to, or which book you're reading in Torah, first fruits, or possibly unleavened bread, festival of weeks. It would be your spring festivals. Then your fall festivals would have your feast of trumpets, Russia, Shana, followed by David Tomat, Yom Kippur, and that's followed by Sukot, which is the festival of Tabernacles.

In the spring, you get this additional, and obviously you have Hanukkah, by the way, right around the turn of the year. That's definitely a later addition to the Jewish calendar arising just after the Hellenistic period, the Greeks, right before the turn of the BCAD turn.

But then in the spring, you have this addition of Perum. Perum is basically the celebration of the Book of Esther. Book of Esther tells a story. And this rescue, I guess you could say, through a guy by name of Mordekai from the evil plot of Haiman, and this rescue is then celebrated.

And the whole thing is kind of interesting. First of all, the name Perum means lots. And at first glance, you think, well, Gali, the name Perum is coming from when they cast lots to pick a date for the destruction of the Jews. It's a weird thing to call it. We'll come back to that maybe here by the time the podcast is over.

And the other thing is the Book of Esther is the only book, and by the way, a couple of unique things about Esther are over here. The only book not found the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Bible, the only book of the Old Testament, the Tenakh, not represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls anywhere. We did not find a copy of the Book of Esther.

Is that because it was perhaps written a little later and they didn't have it or did they intentionally omitted?

Definitely could have been written later. There are, if you do just a basic Google search or even spend some time with a period of things like that, you'll find that there's a lot of discussion about the canonization of Esther.

And where scholars believe Jewish scholars, not just Christian scholars, but where Jewish thought places Esther and how it evolved in the canon of Jewish biblical literature.

So there's that. But Esther, back to maybe our more original point, is the only book of the Bible to not mention God, God is nowhere in the book.

And yet God is everywhere in the book. And so if you ever get a chance to see a Jewish community celebrating Perm, it's going to look like the Jewish version of Halloween.

They're all dressed up in costumes. It's a, it's a real huge festival. It's a huge party, huge celebration, costume. And the reason they dress up in costumes is because it, it seems like in the Book of Esther, God is there the whole time, but he's kind of in disguise.

He's never mentioned, but he's obviously there. So God is kind of in costume. And so that's one of the things that comes out of the book as well. So yeah, Perm is this two day celebration.

Not everybody does two days, but it can be. You celebrate the first half of the book on the first night and the second half of the book on the second night. And it's this big two day party and celebration. So yeah, there you go.

But speaking about all those things that are underneath the surface, we're going to have to recommend this book about 50 times by time we're done with this podcast today.

But it's been a while since we talked about Foreman, Rabbi Foreman, Rabbi David Foreman. Yeah, session one, he was like our go to guy. I get messages from people in session one all the time, like,

And they're nice about it. But they're like, do you have any other sources besides Rabbi Foreman. But and I always say, hey, we're going to get away from Rabbi Foreman. We did. And now, and he's back because his study on the Book of Esther was phenomenal.

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