Purim pluses and minuses this year
Ezzie, of SerandEz, asked “How was your Purim?”
The answer is too long to post as a comment.
We had our very first Seudat Purim (festive Purim meal), and had a wonderful time. We did a little talking, both serious and funny, about Purim, and a lot of talking about synagogue politics (all three of us are Board and Ritual Committee members, heaven help us, and the three of us constitute roughly ¼ of the people who chant haftarot at our synagogue).
On the other hand, there was this.
In his Thursday, March 16, 2006 post, “Al ha'mar v'hamatok,” DovBear said, “It's two days after Purim, and we still can't see my dining room table, which is sagging under the weight of approximately eight metric tons of miniature candy bars.”
Thirty-four comments concerning bottles of booze and wine, savory foods, and candy and pastries by the pound exchanged among friends.
And us?
There was one thing that we did not discuss with our guest, because she was kind enough to give us two mishloach manot packages (the second a huge basket of real and junk food that she brought to our seudah). (It’s obligatory to “send” (mishloach) at least two “portions” (manot) of food to two people [hope I got the minimum requirements correct] on Purim.) The year that we decided not to go back to our old synagogue for Purim but to attend the Megillah reading at our local shul, we got a bit of surprise. At our former shul, where, as I once explained to a be-sheiteled co-worker at a former place of employment, we “davvened with the apikorsim [prayed with the heretics],” people knew exactly what we were doing, and why, when we handed out mishloach manot, and they were tickled. Here, the first time we handed out mishloach manot, our fellow and sister congregants looked at us as if we had three heads. This year, I accidentally underbought, and discovered, too late, that we had only about 20 hamantashen (Purim pastries) with which to make the mishloach manot packages. At first, I was quite upset. But after further consideration, I concluded that that wasn’t such a bad thing. After all, we’ve been giving out mishloach manot here for well over a decade, and yet, every year, there are rarely more than two congregants (always the same two) who ever give us mishloach manot. I guess that, combined with all the other narishkeiten (nonsense) that's been making me feel unwelcome in my own shul , it finally hit me this year. Hard.
And they call themselves traditional Conservative Jews.
The answer is too long to post as a comment.
We had our very first Seudat Purim (festive Purim meal), and had a wonderful time. We did a little talking, both serious and funny, about Purim, and a lot of talking about synagogue politics (all three of us are Board and Ritual Committee members, heaven help us, and the three of us constitute roughly ¼ of the people who chant haftarot at our synagogue).
On the other hand, there was this.
In his Thursday, March 16, 2006 post, “Al ha'mar v'hamatok,” DovBear said, “It's two days after Purim, and we still can't see my dining room table, which is sagging under the weight of approximately eight metric tons of miniature candy bars.”
Thirty-four comments concerning bottles of booze and wine, savory foods, and candy and pastries by the pound exchanged among friends.
And us?
There was one thing that we did not discuss with our guest, because she was kind enough to give us two mishloach manot packages (the second a huge basket of real and junk food that she brought to our seudah). (It’s obligatory to “send” (mishloach) at least two “portions” (manot) of food to two people [hope I got the minimum requirements correct] on Purim.) The year that we decided not to go back to our old synagogue for Purim but to attend the Megillah reading at our local shul, we got a bit of surprise. At our former shul, where, as I once explained to a be-sheiteled co-worker at a former place of employment, we “davvened with the apikorsim [prayed with the heretics],” people knew exactly what we were doing, and why, when we handed out mishloach manot, and they were tickled. Here, the first time we handed out mishloach manot, our fellow and sister congregants looked at us as if we had three heads. This year, I accidentally underbought, and discovered, too late, that we had only about 20 hamantashen (Purim pastries) with which to make the mishloach manot packages. At first, I was quite upset. But after further consideration, I concluded that that wasn’t such a bad thing. After all, we’ve been giving out mishloach manot here for well over a decade, and yet, every year, there are rarely more than two congregants (always the same two) who ever give us mishloach manot. I guess that, combined with all the other narishkeiten (nonsense) that's been making me feel unwelcome in my own shul , it finally hit me this year. Hard.
And they call themselves traditional Conservative Jews.
posted by Shira Salamone at 8:47 AM
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