A Mad Hatter Purim costume from a street fair in Tel Aviv in 2015. Image by Flickr

By Ari Feldman March 21, 2019

Seen at a raucous Purim party Wednesday evening in Brooklyn: witches, wizards, leprechauns, Lucha Libre fighters, cowboys, aliens, various elements of law enforcement, The Marvelous Mrs. Maizel, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, sexy Ruth Bader Ginsburg, sexy hamantaschen, goddesses of all varieties, and Donald Trump’s last surviving sperm in the year 3019. In an auxiliary dance room next to the coat check line, a man dressed head-to-toe in American flag paraphernalia chanted Megillat Esther at lightspeed, only pausing every so often to twirl the classic wooden grogger he kept tucked into his belt.

This was only at one party, Lab/Shul and Reboot’s co-hosted PPPPPPurim event, at the dance club House of Yes, in Bushwick. Attendees displayed every level of creativity, from the I-banker-looking guy who clearly came from work and slipped on a $3 mask, to the green forest deity in full spandex and makeup and wearing a wig that looked like a chow chow pelt. Only one costume appeared to catch some serious flack, fairly early on in the night: a person in a full-length burqa was seen trying to dodge the attention of another attendee asking them, “Why do you think that’s funny?”

Across the world yesterday Jews dressed up to hear the reading of the megillah, to eat hamataschen and to dance and drink and get buck wild — all because that’s tradition! Here is a round-up of some of the best Purim costumes posted to social media — none of which appropriate anyone’s culture or perpetuate racism!

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at feldman@forward.com or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman

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