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:


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?


“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!