When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad invited Holocaust deniers from around the world to “re-envision history” by shedding darkness on our people’s darkest hours, white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke spoke on behalf of “the oppressed people of the world” and was given an opportunity on CNN to call Wolf Blitzer a… More ▸
Imagine what Esther and Mordechai could have accomplished with YouTube. A New Jersey synagogue has seized upon the latest Internet technology to send the Purim message to far-flung U.S. Jewish troops and raise funds for gift packages, or mishloach manot. The YouTube message, performed as a good-natured spoof of an Oval Office address, has exceeded… More ▸
” ‘Christian money makes Jewish film’ — that’s the headline I’d like to see above your article,” Matthew Crouch, producer of “One Night with the King,” suggested in an interview. The film, based on the Book of Esther from the Purim holiday, “brims with adventure, intrigue, romance and wonder,” said Crouch, the son of mega-televangelists… More ▸
A Jewish leader in Belarus has sent a letter to Belarusian officials arguing that a local prosecutor illegally forced a Jewish kindergarten teacher to remove Jewish symbols from classrooms. Yakov Basin, the deputy leader of the country’s Jewish community, sent the letter last month, after the prosecutor said Lyudmila Izakson-Bolotovskaya violated the law by holding… More ▸
Jews are prime consumers of Metamucil, can never order directly off a menu and — enough already! — too many of them become Buddhists. These were some of the lessons of an irreverent, self-deprecating, high-octane version of the Purim story, as told by a host of Broadway stars who spent their shows’ night off Monday… More ▸
Wedged between the drama of life and death, Purim is also a love story. It’s the saga of how a young woman met her husband, a man who initially seemed coarse and hard-boiled, but in the end arguably turned out to be a real mensch. Set in ancient Persia, the story opens with King Ahasuerus… More ▸
Purim celebrates the ancient Jewish victory over evil in Persia, but this year it also signaled war against Iraq. Few Jewish leaders and thinkers failed to hear the historic echoes. Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and a tough critic of the war against Iraq, pointed to… More ▸
Twelve years after Purim celebrations in Israel marked the end of the first Persian Gulf War, Israelis spent the holiday this week preparing for the next war. With an American attack on Iraq imminent, the Israel Defense Force’s Home Front Command on Tuesday ordered the public to prepare sealed rooms for protection against potential chemical… More ▸
In Uganda, Jews celebrate Purim by exchanging gift baskets of fish instead of sweets. In Tunisia they light firecrackers and feast on freshly killed lamb. The teen-agers of one Azerbaijan community used to take the opportunity of the noise made by groggers during Megillah readings to nail the clothing of unsuspecting synagogue members to the… More ▸
“People at the Hogar Adolfo Hirsch old-age home celebrate Purim every year,” says Irene Lubasch de Munster, of Buenos Aires, who assists at the home and is a member of Hadassah. She describes how elderly residents and their aides prepare for their annual Purim party, making posters and invitations, and designing masks and costumes. They… More ▸
