Purim is the Jewish holiday on which we are commanded to drink. And I’m not just talking about a Kiddush cup full of Manischewitz. No, on Purim we are supposed to get shickered, that it is to say, drunk. How drunk? What’s the point? Where does this all come from anyway? This seems a bit…
Donald Trump is a modern American man, one of the most powerful people in the world, thrice married and not known for his meekness. The heroine of the Purim story, Esther, was an orphaned Jewess from ancient Persia plucked out of obscurity to be queen, remembered for her courage to speak truth to power. Hardly…
The moment that the Purim ads start appearing in the religious magazines, I begin to hyperventilate: How to design the perfect cellophane-wrapped gift packages of treats, the traditional mishloach manot we deliver to one another on the morning of the holiday? How many — who makes the cut for that all-important list? And what about…
When I opened the carefully packaged bottle of Tubi 60 with my colleagues, we were all a bit skeptical, to say the least. It was cloudy, yellow — and it smelled like trees. Upon first sip, an (of-age) intern compared the taste to “being dragged through a wind turbine…in a good way.” “It’s a powerful…
Purim is here, and nobody’s getting left behind. The residents of Ichilov Hospital’s children’s ward (in Tel Aviv) were surprised when volunteers dressed as Superman, Batman and Spiderman began scaling the walls of the building using cables attached to the roof, in an effort to reach its inhabitants, on a mission to deliver them mishloach…
Getting Drunk Is Not Kosher Today, we are well aware of the dangers of excessive drinking, alcohol addiction, and binging. There are strict laws regarding distribution of alcohol to minors and driving under the influence of alcohol. Yet at least once a year, On Purim, observant Jews behave as if there is no tomorrow and…
In Europe, my bubbe’s family owned a cow named Vashti. They were too poor to drink her milk or eat her cheese — this they sold to Jews more well-to-do than themselves — but they managed to subsist, from day to day, on the meager earnings derived from Vashti’s dairy products. It was my bubbe’s…
Every time a scandal erupts around the sexual behavior of a powerful man, someone seems to ask, “Well, why didn’t she say no?” It so happens that the Book of Esther begins with the story of a woman who “says no,” and it demonstrates that the consequences of “saying no” can be severe: Queen Vashti…
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