And now for something completely different -- PURIM!

Updated with new links on March 17, 2010.

I got some pictures of our Purim festivities from a friend, so I'm taking a break from Pesach preparations to talk about Purim. Purim is one of the truly fun holidays in the Jewish calendar. You dress up in costumes, you give gifts of food (and sometimes receive them), you have a chance to do something nice for others in the form of tzedakah, and everybody acts just a little bit silly. Or a lot silly, depending on the circumstances.

Before we lived here in Galut, we lived in a small town with a large Jewish population. Purim was lots of fun. Kids got to see that adults can have fun, too! If that's the only lesson they learned from Purim, it was worth it in my book.

Unfortunately, while we belong to a synagogue here, the fun element has pretty much been missing from Purim. Last year, we tried Purim in another city, but that wasn't an option this year. So I talked it over with a few like-minded friends and we decided to have our own home-made Purim celebration.

There are four mitzvot (commandments) associated with Purim:
-- Listen to the megillah (scroll containing the story of Esther and Purim)
-- Have a festive meal (always a good one!)
-- Give gifts of food
-- Give gifts to the poor

How hard, we thought, can it be to do all of those things by ourselves?

Donations to a food pantry and/or a tzedakah fund took care of the last mitzvah. The third was accomplished as we made up special mishloach manot baskets for each other, as well as for other friends. The second was a no-brainer -- we had a potluck dinner as part of our celebration. The first -- the megillah reading -- was the one that took the most time and effort.

The megillah, the story of Esther, is traditionally read in Hebrew in a synagogue. However, because we had a number of children to entertain educate, we decided that it was important to tell the story in a language that they all understood. To make it fun, we decided to set it to music. To involve the kids, we asked them what musical they would like. Their answer was "Mamma Mia".

So in my copious spare time, I wrote a purimshpiel using tunes from "Mamma Mia". Here are some pictures to give you an idea of how things went (and of just how low-budget an operation this was):

Here the stage is set -- i.e., the furniture and cabinets were covered up with some batik fabric we just happened to have lying around and we created a sumptuous, if somewhat clashing, atmosphere for the King's banquet. The royal peacock is checking out the castle premises.

One of the families involved decorated the wine goblets for the feast and they are so gorgeous that I just have to share:

The text says every wine goblet was different, and our decorators took this to heart. Basically, those are just some cheap plastic goblets that they painted with gold paint and glued some "jewels" to. Simple, inexpensive, and totally beautiful.

We had a very small group of players available -- enough for King Ahashverosh, Mordechai, Esther, Haman, and a general dogsbody who played out almost all the bit parts. Our stage manager put on a second hat for a couple of scenes to help out. Also, one player wanted a very short role so she played the part of Vashti, who appears only in the first scene and then disappears. (Our Vashti actually moved to the audience where she got to handle a "spotlight" -- aka big flashlight -- in the second act.) And we had one other adult doing the reading from the megillah scroll itself, though one of the older kids could have managed that if necessary.

Our megillah scroll had the entire text in both Hebrew and English, but we read only selected bits of the megillah in English -- enough to move the story from one part to the next when we couldn't handle it in song.

Our King Ahashverosh was very regal, draped in gold sari fabric.

Mordechai and Esther were obviously from the same family -- they were both wearing pajamas!

Haman had the ear of the King:

Esther got to put on some bling:

And our man-of-all-other-parts read many edicts from the king:

We actually had him change hats for each "role" he played -- messenger, head of the harem, advisor, palace servant, Haman's wife, and so on.

This was one of our favorites:

This picture doesn't really do them justice, but our megillah reader is also a talented artist. She drew some pictures on poster board and made some collages to help us set the scenes -- King's room, Queen's rooms, street, palace gates, Haman's house, etc.

Here's a close-up of the street scene:

We got a karaoke tape (background music only) of the songs from "Mamma Mia" and I edited them using RealPlayer so that we had just the bits of the songs we needed. Then I loaded them on an iPod and wrote the music cues into the script. It was a low-budget operation, but a good time was had by all.

What was even better -- despite clamoring for dinner and other minor disasters, the kids actually got the story. They were singing songs on the way home (so I am told) and one remembered enough to be able to tell his teacher the next day that Haman picked the date for killing all the Jews by throwing dice. (I am still finding some of those dice under pieces of furniture, but that's another story.)

The updates I promised to make several weeks ago are finally done!