These pictures aren’t exactly what you might envision when you think of a religious festival, but among Jewish communities, the annual celebration of Purim can result in intoxicated lightheartedness as it’s celebrated with parties, fancy dress, amazing food and for the guys, a lot of booze.
The scenes in Mea Shearim were characteristic of the holiday, which marks the deliverance of the Jewish people from a plan to eliminate them in the Persian realm 2,500 years ago.
According to the tale, the plot was thought up by Haman, an official of the Achaemenid Empire. Haman was the advisor to Persian King Ahasuerus, but the plans were thwarted by Mordechai.
The story is told in the biblical book of Esther, which is publicly recited in the synagogue, known as the reading of the Megillah, as part of the annual celebrations.
This festive holiday is observed with the exchanging of mouthwatering food, drink and presents, consuming a sumptuous celebratory feast and contributing to the needy.
According to religious law, each adult must give at least two different foods to another person, and at least two charitable donations to the poor during the holiday. The giving of these food parcels, called mishloach manot, has become a huge part of the festivities.
To satisfy the aspect of charity to the needy, either food or money equal to the amount of food that’s consumed at a regular meal can be donated. In Synagogue, collections are also taken.
It’s a holiday which has been embraced by ultra-Orthodox Jewish people, who are known to throw enormous parties, complete with fancy dress and popular dishes such as three-cornered pastries called hamantashen, which are traditionally filled with raspberry, apricot, date or poppy seeds.
Seeds, nuts, legumes and green vegetables are customarily consumed on Purim, as is Kreplach, a dumpling filled with cooked meat, chicken or liver and served with soup.
Special breads are also generally consumed, and a dessert consisting of fried dough balls and vanilla custard, called Arany Galuska is customary for Jews from Hungary and Romania, as well as their descendants, but arguably the wildest part of the celebrations is the drinking of alcoholic liquids to the point of drunkenness.
The custom is said to originate from a statement in the Talmud, attributed to a rabbi named Rava, who allegedly states that men should drink during the celebrations until he can no longer distinguish between Arur Haman (Cursed is Haman) and Baruch Mordechai (Blessed is Mordecai).
It’s believed that consuming wine stimulates the experience of spiritual blindness, in that a person is unable to distinguish between good and evil while inebriated. However, men have had to restrain their drinking in recent years because, during the pandemic, senior ultra-Orthodox rabbis were forced to urge moderation as the enormous parties resulted in a coronavirus spike.
Although, I’m not entirely sure what to make of this splendour. Is that child smoking in the photograph, or do my eyes mislead me?
The festivities look amazing if you want to get plastered, but quite frankly they look downright medieval, and it looks like there will be some extremely aching heads after an evening like that, although it looks like they were having fun, just wondering where all the women were – perhaps they weren’t allowed to enjoy themselves? But it does prove that they’re human after all, just like most other people.
I must confess, it did look like fun, although I wouldn’t have wanted the headache the following morning, and can you imagine all of the collective heartburn of all those Jewish men after consuming hamantashen and kreplach, among other Jewish edibles? Oy Vey!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 