Page 143 of Megillat Esther shows one kid questioning the order of events in the story of Esther (told by the rabbi). The rabbi is sputtering as he tries to come up with an acceptable answer. Having been raised Jewish (and attending over 40 bar/bat mitzvahs in my life... and gone to Jewish summer camp... and Jewish youth groups...) I think it's fair to say that I've met at least a few rabbis over the years. The rabbi in this scene made me giggle because he seemed so real. I know it's a generalization of character, but allow me to show you some dialogue:
Child 1: That's not what you said happened!!
Child 2: (a few lines down) Yeah!! My brother Nicanor says that the real reason that we...
Rabbi (cutting him off): Therefore they called these days... Uh... Purim, b-because of the name PUR. And... Uh... Therefore, upon seeing the word from these letters... When they saw them and... Uh... when they arrived they... Um... They received and... And the Judeans established upon themselves and upon their descendants and upon all who joined them to never fail in keeping these two days at the appointed time each and every year.
It made me laugh a little because Rabbis are all about stories. Sometimes the stories don't make complete sense, but it's all about the moral. The end of the story always has some kind of message (sometimes it flows through the entire story), and that's usually the point. Except when there is no point, which is sometimes...
In these cases, though, the rabbis are not about the technicalities in the stories, it's just the fact that some Jews won a war, ate, got drunk, and partied around this time. And that's why we celebrate [insert any Jewish holiday here].
** note: To be honest, Torah years might be like dog years. A guy living to a hundred and twenty without modern medicine? I don't know... What I'm saying is, for all I know, maybe we celebrate the holidays at the wrong times of year according to the "actual" Torah calendar. It's all Hebrew to me...
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