Flora Purim - Faith

Faith

Purim's mother is Brazilian. Her father, Naum Purim, is Romanian, who emigrated to Brazil from the Russian Empire. Purim is also the name of the annual Jewish festival commemorating the deliverance of the Jews from a plot to exterminate them, as recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther. Hence Flora Purim presumably has Jewish ancestry through her father. She also adheres to the Bahá'í Faith thanks in large part to Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie's death in 1993 prompted Purim, in 2002 to comment on his influence, saying that :

"... still a part of my life. If you ever come to my house, there are pictures of him all over my walls... he would sit in the back of the bus with me for several hours telling life stories about his family and things that happened to him. He took the time to sit with me and show me with his hands where one was, so if I ever wanted to go into another level of jazz positions I could go into it. I loved him not just for that, but I loved him also because he gave me a lot of insight and spirituality, he even gave me his praying book... One day, when we were on the airplane going to Australia, he said to me, "I want you to have this." Then I said to him, "If you give me your praying book how are you going to pray?" He told me he knew every prayer in the book by memory. I didn't believe it. So he challenged me to open the book on any page and ask him to tell me the prayer of the page. So I opened the book and he asked me what prayer was that, and I said the Traveler's Prayer. He asked me which number it was, and then I told him it was the number 3, and he recited the entire prayer. I quizzed him on another prayer and again he blew me away. He knew every single prayer of that book. So I asked him what was his religion and he told me he had been a Bahá'í for thirty years. I asked him what was the philosophy of Bahá'í religion and he said among other things, is the oneness of mankind, universal peace upheld by a world government, equality between men and women, mandatory education for all children of the world and a spiritual solution to the economic power. I was impressed."