Thuy’s 11th Blog
1077 words by thuynguyen
The following individuals left me comments, and I have replied:
Kccuring: Thank for your comment; it is nice to hear. I’m glad you agree that we should make everyone aware of breast cancer whether young or old because the earlier one detects it the faster one seeks medical help. Therefore, this can allow one to prolong life.
BMadison: I’m sorry to hear that breast cancer runs in your family, but it is great that they are still present today to make others aware of it too. I hope you stay aware of your body. Thank you for your effort to help us reach our goal for the lids.
Menisan Nguyen: Thank you for the encouraging comments. Since they are no longer selling the breast cancer yogurt lids, I hope everyone can help us with Unicef by donating change. We will ask for change again this coming week.
CDancy: Thank you for your words of encouragement. It is wonderful to hear that you agree that it is important that we make everyone aware of breast cancer. Yes, it is frustrating that we can not motivate others to donate the lids but everything takes time, and we’re just hoping that everything works out in the end.
SDailey: Thank you for your supportive comment. If you are interested in donating to Unicef, we will collect change again this upcoming week and intend to collect one more time before we turn the money in. For the lids, we mail it in on December 12, 2006 because they are due before the 31st.
Huy Dinh: Thank you for your kind comment. Also, thanks for the advice. I think we will start to focus more on the Unicef project. If you are interested in donating, we will be collecting change this upcoming week and one more time before the semester end. Then we’ll be mailing the money. However, donating money to Unicef never ends nor does it have a deadline like the lids. Therefore, you can continue to donate after the money has been sent; we will save it for the future collection.
Tobit is a book within the Apocrypha that involves the following characters: Tobit, Anna, Sarah, Tobias, Asmodeus, and Raphael. The book contains two different stories that merge together. Tobit is the husband of Anna, and they have a son named Tobias. One day while Tobit–a Jewish grave digger– is digging a grave, he falls asleep. Birds defecate in his eyes and make him blind. Therefore, his wife Anna works and comes home with a goat as a mean of paid. He accuses her of stealing the goat and things become rocky for the couple; he wishes he was dead. Similarly, a girl named Sarah wishes she was dead too during the time of Tobit’s misery. She resides in the distant land called Media. Because she has married seven times and each of her husbands dies on their wedding night due to the horrible demon Asmodeus, she wants to die. The demon slays each and every one of her husbands.
Moreover, God hears both Tobit and Sarah’s prayers and decides to send Raphael, the healing angel, to make things better for them.
Tobit holds off his death because he wants to obtain the debt a man in Media owes him Therefore, he sends his son Tobias to collect the debt. Raphael takes human form and is named Azarias. He accompanies Tobias on his journey to Media. On their way, Tobias is bite by a fish that jumps out of the water that almost kills him. However, they kill the fish and keep the liver, heart, and gallbladder that will be later used. When they arrive in Media, they meet Sarah and reside at her home. Consequently, Tobias and Sarah fall in love and are married. Her father fear’s his newly son in law fate because the previous sons had all died. However, Raphael instructs Tobias to burn the fish’s heart and liver, which creates an odor that, drives the demon away. Raphael imprisons the demon in Egypt. Now, Sarah is happily married to a husband who doesn’t die on their wedding. Also, Tobias collects the debt, and they both return to Nineveh to announce the good news. When they return home, Tobias rubs the gallbladder in Tobit’s eyes, and he can see again. Moreover, the story ends happily as Tobit can see again along with his collected sum of money, and Sarah happily married (The Bible for Dummies 247).
This story teaches one that even when things seem bad, things can change for the better through prayers and faith in God. With patients and faith, good things will come. “Good things come to those who wait.”
Maccabees are those who revolted against the Seleucid Empire especially the oppressive Seleucid king, Antiochus IV. Their revolution is called the Maccabean Revolution, which led to the Jewish Dynasty—Hasmoneans. When Mattathias is asked to offer a pagan sacrifice (a Anticochus’s religious reform that Antiochus decreed to everyone in Judea to follow), he refused, and another Jew performed the sacrifice. As a result, he kills the Hellenized Jew and the official who enforce the king’s decree. Therefore, Mattahias is the individual who initiated the revolt that lead to Jewish independent. After Mattahias’s death, Judah Maccabee, the third son the Jewish priest Mattahias, replaces his father and continues to carry out the revolution during 167- 160 BCE. He is also known as the “Hammer” because his nickname Maccabee in Aramaic means hammer. Because he is very knowledgeable of Judea’s landscape, he is able to defeat the Greeks. Also, he effectively used guerilla war against Antiochus’ troops. Moreover, he was able to retake Jerusalem (165 or 164 BCE). He gets rid of the temple’s pagan ways and ritually purified it. Consequently, the temple is reinstated so proper sacrifices can be made to God (The Bible for Dummies 242-43).
The Jews consider the Maccabees to be heroic because they overthrew the Seleucid Empire and freed them from Hellenism. They don’t have to obey by Antiochus’s decrees, which prohibited circumcision, traditional Jewish sacrifices, and reading the Moses’ Laws. Moreover, the Maccabees allowed Jewish independent and the establishment of the Hasmonean Dynasty.