CHAG SAMEACH: Part Two

So many sights and sounds of Purim, so little space. These Jews really know how to have a good time!



Purim in Israel has morphed into a great candy holiday in the tradition of Halloween and the stores are filled with prepackaged treats. These are given as gifts and it doesn't seem like the kids go trick or treating as we do. I told Vardit on Halloween in Berkeley parents make celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins which are called "ants on a log" and give them as a healthy snack alternative to candy, but she thought I must be kidding. I guess you have to be there to really appreciate the gesture.

I did spend an hour up on a hill overlooking the City with a really cool orthodox guy and his 5 or 6 kids lighting firecrackers and throwing them over the side into the secular neighborhood. Firecrackers are illegal since the banging noise freaks everyone out, but you can't keep these orthodox guys from having a good time, especially if the Bible requires it.

This Ultra has a costumed baby in the stroller, his outfit is not a costume, but his best dress-up clothes, the hat is very expensive and comes from a dead bear in Russia.



This girl was one of the few really authentic Purim characters. She has a group of Haymen's hanging from the stick on her shoulders and I think they all have names in Hebrew on her sign.

How cute is this? The boy on the left is dressed up as a police officer and the boy on the right is an IDF solider. This, of course, is every Ultra mother's dream, oh, except the Ultra orthodox kids don't have to go into the army because they are spending all their time studying God's word, but they can play "war" on the holidays.

Sorry this is a bad picture, but I was scared to death that it was a sin to take it. I went inside an Ultra-synagogue and it was just packed with drunken worshippers. In the front is a Torah and you can see off to the left is a kid dressed up as Yasser Arafat. Everyone was chanting and bouncing back and forth; oh yes did I mention that everyone, even the kids were drunk.

This is one of my favorite costumes. The devil's pitch fork and the skeleton of the grim reaper. Not much Purim symbolism here, but oh sooo Jerusalem.

Sorry, couldn't resist this picture. These two young women were dressed up kind of like Queen Esther if she had been a hooker. Lots of make-up, sexy outfits and they were parading up and down the plaza at Hebrew University. They started laughing as I started picture taking.