The Moon Gets Purim'd!

It is the night of Purim, the most joyous day in the Jewish calendar and we are in the midst of a lunar eclipse. Fortunately, the sky is crystal clear and so the sight of the moon being slowly consumed by the shadow of the earth is truly wondrous.

I don't know if there is any significance to the combination of these two events, but, being the religious person that I am, I wonder whether such coincidences are really as they seem. Could this be some sort of celestial sign that another Purim is on the way, vis a vis our good friend in Iran? Is G-d telling us something by combining the stratospheric cycle with our special celebration?

No doubt, there are some who are reading into this more than I and a school of thought is developing as I pen these musings.

Then again, it might be G-d's way of sharing a new Purim joke with the rest of the world. After all, Purim is an ancient Persian word for "casting lots". Could this be just another random "happening"?

Who knows...

The top sequence of photographs shows Saturday's lunar eclipse as seen from Baghdad, Iraq. The sequence below is the view from Athens, Greece. ©CNN

NB: I saw the bottom sequence, although the moon also turned red!