It’s an oft repeated canard of blatant anti-semites that “Jews own the banks and run the economy”. If this is true, we’re having a bad week, guys.
While no right thinking individual places any credence in such age-old hate, sometimes, the way things happen, even a non-believer might start to think that, even if the Jews don’t run the world, they’ve got a pretty strong connection to the One who does.
This is never more readily apparent than around the time of Purim where we are taught that if we peek behind the curtain, we will see that nothing is a coincidence. Last year, Starbucks, (whose CEO is Jewish) decided that they would pick one day to offer all of their customers free coffee. Of all days, which day did they pick, shushan purim. I mean, come on, you couldn’t pick a better day for free coffee than Shushan Purim where, if you’re not shaking off the cobwebs of a bit of the Ad LoYadah (the mitzvah to drink), you certainly are quite exhausted jumping straight back into the workweek after a long day of Purim festivities. It’s like they pulled this day out of a lottery and the Jews won. Sound familiar?
This year, Purim falls on Friday. This makes for a difficult time crunch; squeezing davening, megillah, shaloch manos and a seudah into a Friday with concomitant Shabbos preparation is no simple task. No problem, we’ll just have congress change the rules for daylight savings time for the first time in twenty years so that we will have an extra hour until chatzos (halachic midday, the time by which many opinions state the majority of the Purim seudah should be completed) and Shabbos will come in an hour later. You see, when you have connections, everything seems to just fall into place.
Happy Purim to all.
David and Charlie: I want to move closer to our grandchildren, not further away. Don’t give Bob any ideas like that. By the way we enjoy the longer days just not the longer darkness in the morning. The sun doesn’t come up until eight a.m. or a little later right now.
You can also move to Guam, I hear they have a great kosher deli.
If you don’t like Daylight Savings Time, just move to Arizona!
It actually does save some energy.
How long does that last for, Bob? And, don’t you enjoy the longer spring and summer days?
Here’s proof that even if we run the world, we can’t agree on how to run it!
DST makes our shacharis in Indianapolis hard to do at the right time during its shorter days because of extended darkness in the morning.
Indiana only adopted DST because nearly all other states used it. So if Jewish clout compelled all states to repeal DST, our shacharis timing problem would go away.
Why would we?
If we’re so powerful, why don’t we repeal Daylight Savings Time?
Yes, but they also made the fast longer. Anti-semites!