In Tel Aviv, Purim is not just a holiday for humans. Plenty of dogs are decked out in fashionable costumes. One dog I saw was dressed like a lion. The dog-lion attracted claps and whistles from passersby. Another more feminine dog wore a headband with a pink sequined bow, and still another had an elaborate…
We do not tend to think of Mordecai as a displaced person, but perhaps we should. His family, we are told, had been exiled from Jerusalem (Esther 2:6) by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Mordecai himself embraces this placelessness. Out of home in the world, the man refuses to come indoors. King Achashverosh cavorts in lavish…
Despite its regular appearance on the Jewish calendar, Purim tends to take me by surprise each year, leaving me scrambling to bake my hamentashen and assemble a costume for our synagogue’s all-ages party. Last year, though, I was prepared. “I’m going as a nun,” I announced to my husband. A friend had a costume from…
Purim is the Israeli Halloween. Pop-up costume shops appear in the weeks ahead, children dress up for school and hamantaschen are as ubiquitous as mini Snickers bars. But there’s a darker side to the holiday, too. The Purim story is a tale of revenge. After Esther and Mordechai foil Haman’s plot to kill the Jews,…
Purim is coming up this Saturday, and we found the perfect six videos for you to watch in celebration. You know, in between digging through your closet for a last minute D.I.Y costume and shoving endless hamantaschen into your mouth. “Esther’s a Jew” by Erez Cohen Esther, JSwipe and a well-produced spin on Ellie King’s…
The story of evil trying to triumph over good is a story the Jewish community knows well. Every Purim, we remember the heroic actions of Queen Esther, who took a stand against evil and reversed the plot of a man who planned to persecute and annihilate the Jewish people. Her quiet diplomacy helped her husband,…
In an exclusive on-the-record interview with The Backward, three members of the Nobel Prize Committee broke off from listening to Abba to explain their reasons for awarding the Literature Prize to a 1960s folk singer who sounds like a punctured accordion. “Oh, yah. We gave it to him mostly to keep screwing with Philip Roth’s…
Is that an angel on your shoulder or are you just unhappy to see me? I ask this of the “Prayer Police” — the folks who put the “nag” in “synagogue” — who reported Jared Kushner for mispronouncing a word and thus changing a sentence from malche ha-mlachim, “King of Kings,” to melach ha-malachim, “Salty…
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