Dazed and confused? Not me. I’m just Lost in the Cheese Aisle.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

PRAYER AND PERFORATION

Hallowe’en is not in any way a Jewish holiday, despite the fact that many of us Red Sea Pedestrians celebrate it in its attenuated, secularized, candy-packed, American form... but that doesn’t mean we can’t come up with our own occasions for dressing up and acting silly. When better than on Purim, a holiday of revelry (a certain degree of drunken merriment being encouraged) and joy over our collective deliverance from an ancient genocidal plot?

Costumery is the order of the day. At evening services, one of our congregation’s rabbis was dressed as Charlie Chan, the other as Spongebob Squarepants. The Missus and I, relatively restrained, appeared in the guise of Morticia and Gomez Addams.

The following morning, I followed my usual tradition of wearing a Silly Hat as I read the Book of Esther. Lookee:

Reading the Megillah
Yours Truly reads Megillat Esther - the Book of Esther - whilst decked out in the requisite Silly Hat. The bound volume on the table, incidentally, is there solely to help immobilize the parchment scroll from which I am reading. The wall plaque bears the Hebrew word mizrach (east), the direction in which one normally faces while praying.

And if that’s not silly enough, how about this?

Colander and Megillah
“Is that a colander on your head, or are you glad to see me?”

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to what type of Perforated Headgear I’m wearing?

Why, it’s a Hebrew Colander, of course!

3 comments:

K-nine said...

Last night after dinner and drinks with the lovely and amazing Erica Sherman I was standing on the platform in brooklyn in my 1930's overcoat and bowler cap, checking my pocket watch before the next train to midtown, when a beautiful young gypsy girl arrived. She was in costume and on her way to a Purim party.
Not fooled into thinking I was also celebrating (my distinctly scots-Irish features giving me away) we rode several stops together whilst she told me about Purim tradition.
Seems she is a chef at a kosher French (imagine that!) resturant in Brooklyn, the name of which escapes me, but which I will definitely have to find on one of my trips up here.
As with many of my stories, there is no point, I just wanted to share.

K-nine said...

Oh, and because of the difference between lunar months and a solar year, does that mean after 231 years your headgear will be a full day behind my gregorian colander?

Eliezer Eisenberg said...

Don't worry. We've got intercalation and such down to an art, and every seventeen years we manage to get our act in sync with the solar year.