IDF soldier returning from Gaza
IDF soldier returning from GazaFlash 90

Dozens of IDF officers from the armored corps were forced today (Thursday) to listen to a lecture from the IDF Educational Division on the subject of "Secular Judaism," during which the lecturer lashed out at the Book of Esther and Jews worldwide who celebrate the associated customs of Purim every year.

Although soldiers protested during the course of the lecture, the lecturer continued to speak.

"A scandalous book, it's a wonder that it ever made it into our Holy Bible," the lecturer scathed as an introduction to her speech.

"A book that is all death, the name of G-d doesn't appear once, and a woman is at the forefront. A woman that...has a relationship with a foreign king. A woman called - G-d help us - Esther."

According to the lecturer, who is associated with the secular yeshiva called "Bina," "Esther - [call her] Eti, is the name of a Babylonian fertility goddess. Mordechai - [call him] Moti, is the name of the strongest of the Babylonian gods. It's a name completely foreign to Judaism. A dirty name."

The lecturer referred to the scores of Jews around the world who clap loudly to stomp out the name of the evil Haman, as "barbarians."

She also said that the hanging of Haman's ten sons amounted to nothing less than a massacre.

"It's a very problematic book," she added. "So problematic that our sages made a concerted effort to remove it from the Bible. In the Kumran scrolls they found a scroll that was supposed to be a substitute for the Book of Esther, called the Book of Judith...whose only goal was to rectify the terrible book of Mordechai the Jew, the businessman, the politician, the empty and small man that tried to make a lobby for himself by selling his niece."

Why, then, according to the lecturer, did Esther make it into the Bible?

"Because it contains a lot of the same things that another problematic book - the Song of Songs - does: sex and ****. The sages tried to get rid of these books, but they survived because they had huge ratings... so these books didn't succeed in disappearing."

The anti-religious lecture comes after weeks of attacks among the army establishment against Rabbinical figures who criticised homosexuality in the context of halacha (Jewish Law). It remains to be seen how the IDF ranks will react to this latest installment in an "educational series" from IDF Education Division.