After reading the Book of Esther for the holiday of Purim on Wednesday evening, Jews leaving the synagogue will be greeted by the sight of a supermoon overhead, a phenomenon to which some rabbinic experts ascribe great import.
A supermoon occurs when the full moon coincides with the perigee — the closest that the Moon comes to the Earth in its elliptic orbit — resulting in a larger-than-usual apparent size of the lunar disk as viewed from Earth. A full moon at perigee appears roughly 14% larger in diameter than at apogee and appears up to 30 percent brighter. Supermoons usually appear 3-4 times each year.
The Purim supermoon will be the final in a series of three consecutive full-moon/ supermoons. The next appearance of supermoons will also be a triad, culminating on the night before Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year).
Purim also coincides with the vernal (spring) equinox when the Sun crosses the celestial equator – the imaginary line in the sky above the Earth’s equator – from south to north. On the equinox, the day and night are each about 12 hours in length everywhere on Earth.
Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson, a Bible codes expert, placed special significance on the appearance of the Purim Supermoon. In his video on the subject, Rabbi Glazerson used a Torah program to search for equidistant letter sequences in the Bible.
His revelations were focused on the 38th chapter of Genesis where he found interspersed in the text the term ירח ענקי (huge moon), פורים (Purim), תשובה (repentance), משיח (Messiah) and יד אדר (fourteenth of the Hebrew month of Adar, the day on which Purim is celebrated).
The name יוסף (Joseph) appears four times in the graph.
“This is not surprising,” Rabbi Glazerson said in the video. “There are a lot of similarities between the story of Esther and the story of Joseph. They are both stories of Jews outside of Israel beginning the redemption in hidden ways.”
The rabbi also found the word ישראל (Israel) near the word התראה (warning).
“Israel is always compared to the moon,” Rabbi Glazerson explained. “Now the moon is shining, very large. This is an indication that Jews really should begin to shine now. Israel can complete redemption this Purim but this is a warning that it can only happen if they repent.”
The rabbi emphasized that one of the essential elements of the Purim story was the unity of the Jewish people in the face of adversity. This was a message he gave in a video last month, in which he stated that this upcoming holiday of Purim was auspicious and bore with it the possibility of bringing the Messiah. In the video, he stated that there is “a process of Messiah that started in 5776.” The appearance of Moshiach in the current year is “dependent on repentance. Only if Jews would keep the Torah, keep the Sabbath, keep everything which God wants them to keep.”
Rabbi Glazerson gave an end-date, a point at which even if the Jews do not repent the Messiah will appear.
“There is an end of days. This is the end of days – 5781.”
This means that according to Rabbi Glazerson’s Bible codes, the process of redemption began in 2016, continues this year and, even without full repentance, will end in 2021.
