“People love the costumes, as far as
what people associate [Purim] with,”
Brody said. “The wisdom of the people
won out.”
The commercialization of the holiday
— and holidays in general — particularly
in the United States, adds weight to this
argument. Similar to Purim costumes coinciding
with early Mardi Gras celebrations, in
19th and 20th century America, holidays
such as Purim and Hanukkah — which
were in close calendar proximity to
Easter and Christmas, respectively —
began to mirror commercial traditions of
their Christian counterparts. It was “in
part, a function of all the developments
in the 19th century, in which Judaism
tries to adapt itself to the reality and the
illusion of being abused, being accepted
into the mainstream,” Soltes said.

Purim really began becoming
commercialized in America during
World War II; the rise of Halloween-
esque costumes in Israel took place in the
following decades, after the founding of
the state and in the 1960s and ‘70s, when
it was gaining its economic sea legs.

Brody, who lives in Israel, is experiencing
the Purim-craze firsthand: “Every
children’s store, they’re selling costumes;
they’ve been selling hamantashen for a few
weeks. Israeli schools, they’re not learning
too much this month. There’s a lot of
costume wearing, for better or for worse.”
But area synagogues rehearsing
their spiels for the upcoming holiday
are confident in their ability to balance
frivolity and the meaning of the holiday.

Philadelphia-based Congregation
Rodeph Shalom will have a spiel this
year based on the 2022 Disney film
“Encanto,” which Rabbi Eli Freedman
said is a popular spiel theme this year
both because of the ease with which one
can adapt Disney songs and because of
its popularity among young people. (The
movie’s original song “We Don’t Talk
About Bruno” is only the second song
from a Disney film to reach the top of the
Billboard Top 100 chart.)
Drawing heavily from popular culture
can help Jewish children connect with an
otherwise-distant story, the rabbi said.

“It’s sometimes hard for especially
students, younger folks to be able to relate
to a story which took place thousands of
years ago in Persia,” he said. “The same
is true for the stories from the Torah.

Ultimately, as a rabbi, when I give a
sermon on Shabbat, the main purpose
of my sermon is the same thing…taking
this text from thousands of years ago and
making it relevant to today.”
Rodeph Shalom’s spiels have also
worked to build community. In 2015,
the congregation merged with an LGBT
congregation Beth Ahavah. Since the
merge, one of Beth Ahavah’s founders,
Jerry Silverman, dresses up in drag as
Queen Esther, an effort that Freedman
described as “a gift to the rest of our
congregation.” For Rabbi Abe Friedman of Temple
Beth-Zion-Beth Israel in Philadelphia,
the mixing of joy and the seriousness of
the holiday was felt first hand in 2020.

BZBI hosted their Purim celebration just
days before the first wave of pandemic
restrictions. “Emotionally, it’s really associated with
the move to the pandemic,” Friedman
said. After putting out an open call to
congregants to send in pre-recorded
videos to compile for a 2021 Zoom Purim
spiel, Friedman was blown away by what
his congregants came up with. One spieler
chanted the contents of his CVS receipt
using the megillah-reading tropes.

“The frivolity is, I think, actually very
serious because it asks us to see the
absurd in life,” Friedman said. “It asks
us not to take ourselves too seriously. It
asks us not to take our institutions too
seriously, not to take our leaders too
seriously.” Particularly during the pandemic
restrictions last year, Purim allowed the
congregation to not lose perspective of
life, Friedman said. The laughter and joy
is a vital piece of Jewish life.

As Purim approaches this year,
Friedman is drawn to the images in
the news of Ukrainian grandmothers
lecturing Russian soldiers, invoking
similarities between Esther standing up
for the Jewish people, an image that can
only be understood by fully immersing
oneself in Purim’s traditions.

“Purim is about more than just a
party,” Friedman said. “The party is a
means to actually understanding the
power that we have in the world….and I
don’t know that there’s a more important
message for us to be dealing with right
now.” JE
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