By HENRY ABRAMSON
(JTA) – Every year before Purim, my inbox and social media fill up with dire exhortations from rabbis and yeshivas warning against the dangers of celebratory excess – as if drunkenness on the holiday were something new.
In reality, the after-Purim regrets have been part of the...
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By EMILY RAY BARAF
(JTA) — Purim is often filled with boisterous celebrations, drinking and an embrace of the otherwise taboo.
Yet the Book of Esther recounts a traditional story that confines to the most damaging stereotypes about women, especially in its portrayal of queens Esther and Vashti. In the traditional...
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By RABBI DAVID WOLPE
Purim is a holiday of masks. A mask doesn’t fully change you, but it obscures identity, distorting who you are. A mask permits you to assume a slightly different way of being in the world. The boy who dresses as Mordechai can act old and wise, but...
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By ARIEL SOBEL
LOS ANGELES (JTA) – Queen Esther had a secret – a violent, consuming reality pulsing through her veins that kept her up at night. It made every room feel like solitary confinement. If it were exposed, it could end her job, her marriage and even her life. But...
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Adloyadah, the annual community-wide Purim celebration, will be held this Sunday, February 25, at the Uptown Jewish Community Center from 11:30 a.m. till 3:30 p.m.
The event will be held indoors regardless of weather, so parents should rest assured that the weather will not spoil any plans to celebrate the...
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By CNAAN LIPHSHIZ
TILBURG, Netherlands (JTA) — Although he lives in a city with only a few dozen Jews, the Israel-born photographer Idan Hemo and his family enjoy each spring what he calls “hardcore Purim” street festivities.
“Everyone dresses up, including and especially the adults, in elaborate costumes and there’s...
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By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB
“PURIM: SERIOUS FUN“
Yiddish, in many sectors of the Jewish community, is a dying language. This is a pity because of the many pearls of wisdom that are contained in Yiddish stories and folk songs.
One such song has these words:
The community wide Purim celebration will be held indoors at the Uptown Jewish Community Center on Sunday, March 12, beginning at 11:30 a.m.
In addition to expected inclement weather, the center’s back yard is not available this year due to construction for the new fitness center and aquatics area.
The...
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(JTA) — The Bnei Akiva Jewish youth movement published online a Purim video of its members performing a dance choreographed by the brother of a fallen Israeli soldier. Hemi Goldin, whose brother, Hadar, was killed by Hamas in 2014 and whose body has not been returned for burial, invented the...
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By ELLEN HERSHKIN
(JTA) — Shots fired into a classroom window at an Indiana synagogue. Cemeteries desecrated in Pennsylvania, Missouri, and New York. Swastikas scrawled on Jewish buildings. More than 100 bomb threats called in to Jewish community centers.
History doesn’t always repeat itself, but echoes of the darkest chapters...
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