Happy Purim! Let’s get drunk and have a hanging!

February 27, 2010 ·

I’m not normally one for religious holidays of any sort, but an article in Slate has made me think I might be missing out on a terrific holiday – Purim!

“An old Purim tradition to erect a mock gallows and hang Haman and his 10 sons in effigy survives in some Orthodox neighborhoods today.”

But that’s not all, folks! “[O]ne of Purim's most famous traditions [is] getting drunk. The Talmud instructs Jews to drink on Purim until they cannot differentiate between the statements "wicked is Haman" and "blessed is Mordecai," the Book of Esther's Jewish protagonist. As countless slurred sermons have reminded us, little separates good from evil, and any one of us can easily fail.”

A gallows and a handle of Manischewitz – as one might say in the spirit of the joke about the priest and the rabbi ("better than ham, wasn't it?"), better than a Menorah and a dradel.

Who says Jews don't know how to party?

http://www.slate.com/id/2246139/pagenum/all/#p2