holidays

About this time in the US, stores and malls are full of Easter decorations and goodies. Here in Israel, the focus is Passover.

This is the Jewish holiday that celebrates the liberation of the Jews from Egypt in the time of Moses. On the first night of the holiday here in Israel, and the first and second nights outside of Israel, there is a special meal called the seder. The seder is a ritual meal during which the story of how the Israelites became slaves in Egypt and how they became free is told. There is a text which is read, called the Hagada (lit. the telling) in which the main story is interspersed with prayers and additional commentaries about the meaning of the holiday and how it applies to our identity, life and religious commitments as Jews today. There is also an order in which certain food are eaten and specific portions of the tale are told. It's that order that gives the meal it's name. Seder (סדר) means "order" in Hebrew.

In this video you can see signs in a store for a super sale on housewares, and examples of seder plates both in the store and at an independent booth in the walkway of the mall.

My friend and colleague in the social media consulting and journalism scene here in Israel, Ezra Butler, made this really cute video on Purim. In it he explains why we dress up in costume on the holiday, and he shows his own transformation.

You can see more of Ezra at StartupLucky.com where he covers Israeli startups with great personal interviews and lots of humor.

Purim is the holiday that celebrates the story told in the book of Esther. We celebrate surviving an attempted annihilation of the entire Jewish people in one swipe, back in the days of king Ashuerus (aka Ahashverosh). Religious people go to the synagogue or to parties to hear the book of Esther chanted, and then everyone gets rip-roaringly drunk and has a marvelous time.

Yes, I said everyone gets drunk. This is a festival of drunken revelry and silliness. It's part Halloween (costumes), part April Fools (fake, silly news in the newspapers), and part Bacchanalia (that would be the drunken revelry). About 2000 years ago, when they were writing down the Talmud, the rabbis said that you should get so drunk on Purim that you don't know the difference between Haman (the bad guy) and Mordechai (the good guy).

For non-religious people, the holiday is pretty much the same, except without the reading the book part. Replace chanting with loud music at a Tel Avivi night club and stir.

This video was taken last Friday, a few days before Purim, but you can see toward the end of the video that someone was already wearing their devil horns.

This video was taken on Monday, Purim night, in a neighborhood in Tel Aviv where there are a lot of bars and dance clubs.