(JTA) — Every Purim, Richard Roberts sponsors a party for more than 2,000 people in the heavily Orthodox New Jersey city of Lakewood, where he gives out, by his estimation, some $200,000 in charity. This year, because of the coronavirus, the party is cancelled. Roberts, a philanthropist and former pharmaceutical executive, made the decision Wednesday…
To celebrate Purim, our Jewish social diarist went clubbing and protesting, back to back. She partied downtown, and protested in Midtown. She drank with Chabad and the club crowd, and marched with the beanie-wearing leftists. Here, she tells the tale of two very different Purims. The BASH. We knew we were close to “The Official…
It wasn’t a Purim joke, though it may have sounded like one. On Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a Christian television network that it’s “possible” that God sent President Trump to save the Jews — just like he sent Queen Esther, from the Purim story. “Could it be that President Trump right now…
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Erez Eli (@rizo1572) on Mar 21, 2019 at 6:34am PDT 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,…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Shul was packed last Shabbos – not because of a bar mitzvah or aufruf, but because on the last Shabbos before Purim, Shabbat Zachor, we read the short passage that commands us to ‘erase’ our bitter enemy – the people of Amalek whose most famous descendant was…
Purim is one of the more peculiar days of Jewish revelry; it is characterized by palace intrigue — jockeying for power, betrayal and sexual trickery — and hails Jewish victory over an avowed enemy. Laced with irony, the Book of Esther, also known as the Megillah, recounts the story of the Jews of Shushan in…
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The Netherlands’ main Jewish weekly is the kingdom’s oldest commercial magazine and one of its most reputable publications. Which is why many Dutch were shocked to read a column Tuesday by its editor announcing that she is leaving for Israel because of rising anti-Semitism here. “I am leaving for the only country where…
Myth 1: Esther entered a royal beauty pageant to audition to be the queen Let’s look at what the Megillah actually says – “When the king’s order and edict was proclaimed, and when many girls were assembled in the royal province of Shushan under the supervision of Hegai, Esther too was taken into the king’s palace…
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