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March 16, 2012
Kibbutznik pride on display
Purim in Israel is a no-holds-barred day of eating, fun and giving.
EMILY SINGER
In this continuing series, Emily Singer shares her family’s aliyah experiences and stories from their first year in Israel, where they live on Kibbutz Maale Gilboa, a small religious community in the lower Galilee.
‘Tis the season – at least here in Israel. When you walk the streets, Purim is in the air. Stores and sidewalks are lined with costumes and goodies. Holiday music blasts from the radios. People are humming “Leitzan Katan” (“My Little Clown”) everywhere you go. School children are collecting money and food for the poor.
Purim is like Israel’s anti-Halloween. It looks similar, with children in costumes and bags stuffed with candy, but it is different in every other possible way. On Halloween, children beg and threaten for candy (“trick or treat”), and look for ways to play pranks on their neighbors and friends. On Purim, we enthusiastically distribute candy and gifts to our friends and to the needy.
Purim wasn’t always so altruistic. When the Jews of Persia defeated Haman’s army, they celebrated the only way they knew how – with a drunken feast. Mordechai came along and turned Purim into a Jewish holiday, by instituting four essential rituals.
First, we must remember what happened, which we do by reading the Megillah (to wit, raise your hand if you know the story of Halloween). Second, if it is going to be a Jewish holiday, we must eat. We get together with others for a seudah, a feast. Third, it’s not enough just to eat – we are required to share food with friends, by sending mishloach manot, gift packages of food. Finally, for the celebration to be a true Jewish holiday, we distribute matanot la’evyonim, gifts to the poor.
No one captures the essence of the holiday of Purim better than our new home on Kibbutz Maale Gilboa. First of all, in the spirit of sharing and not wasting (two classic kibbutz values), a few families organize a “costume rental” every year. People lend out their old costumes, and others rent them for a small fee. Then, they distribute the proceeds to needy families. This is how my son, Adin, gets his great Pikachu costume. He loves it so much that he puts it on the second he gets home, and we have to peel it off him a week later, when Purim is over.
The holiday kicks off with the Megillah reading. Everyone is in costume. While it is customary to boo or to shake a gragger at Haman’s name, there is a crowd of rowdy guys at the back who, instead, break out into song and dance. You can hear the commotion from the far end of the kibbutz (and quite possibly in nearby Jordan). The kids are enraptured.
After the reading, we return home to spend a moment unwinding and getting the kids ready for bed – before the adult party extravaganza. The kibbutz has arranged babysitting by the kibbutz teenagers. Unfortunately, the first year, we misunderstand the memo and we don’t sign up for babysitting, on the theory that our teenage daughter will be home. Little do we know that they have assigned her to another family! We’ll never make that mistake again.
We arrive at the party with small change in our pockets, as requested on the invitation. We find the hall lined with beggars or, more accurately, that the heads of the different kibbutz services (the gardener, the head of children’s programming, the woman in charge of the swimming pool and others) are dressed as beggars, holding charity boxes and pleading their causes. Apparently, they are poking fun at the heated debate going on in Israel about how to cut costs to meet the budget.
Not incidentally, the party uses my favorite caterers – ourselves! Everyone brings something. Not only does this save on costs but, also, it means we get the very best of what everyone can do. People who don’t want to cook bring drinks or help clean up. Everyone pitches in. It’s kibbutz.
After eating and shmoozing, there is a big Purim shpiel – a traditional holiday show where people get up and perform funny acts, usually laughing about current events or local issues. This year, there is a lot of material about the budget cuts, as well as the debate over whether dogs should be allowed to roam free, a topic that has taken up much space in the weekly kibbutz newsletter. Being new, we don’t get all the jokes, but we can tell they are very funny.
When we get home late and relieve our babysitters, their fun is just beginning. The teenagers have a party that starts at 11:30 p.m. The Purim festivities are nonstop, round the clock.
In the morning, there is a huge breakfast with carnival games for the kids. The place is modeled after an Israeli hotel breakfast and there are people making pancakes and omeletes to order. And who is doing the cooking and serving? You guessed it – we are! Adults serve food, while kids take turns manning the booths for the carnival. (The teenagers are still at home, asleep.)
After all these festivities, it is time to distribute matanot la’evyonim. In America, we would call up a charity organization and give them our credit card number over the phone. This year, we go down the mountain to Beit Alpha, where there is an absorption centre for new Ethiopian immigrants. We deliver big food packages door-to-door. People are so happy to see us!
At one point, Abaye and Adin are wiped out, so we take a break and sit on a bench. One of the immigrants sits down next to us. He says he has been here half a year. He tells us in his very limited Hebrew and English that he is not happy in Israel. He says the land is good but the people are very bad. He doesn’t have the language to really articulate why. It’s silly, but I wonder if he has just gotten back from the post office.
Meanwhile, the boys are complaining that they are thirsty but I don’t have any water with me. I ask our new friend if we might be able to get some water from his room. He gets very excited and starts to lead the way. But the boys are falling apart, and they are not up for the walk. Suddenly, our new friend turns to me and shouts, “You need cold water!” He tells us he will buy some at the market. I don’t want him spending his money and I don’t have any to offer, but he insists. He bikes off, and returns a few minutes later with three fresh, cold bottles. He is excited to give us the bottles, and the boys are so happy to receive them. When we meet up with Ross, I try to pay the boy back, but he won’t take our money. He, also, wants to give.
When we get back to the mountain, I am ready for bed, but it is only 2 p.m., and we still have two more mitzvot to do. The first is mishloach manot. This is not usually my favorite part of the holiday. Everyone exchanges baskets of candy and junk food to all their friends, and you spend the rest of the year trying to diet it off.
Technically, one only needs to give one gift of two items, but people like to go crazy. When I volunteered on a kibbutz more than 20 years ago, everyone would give to everyone else. I spent the day with my Israeli “adoptive family.” They would start with one round of packages, full of junk food, which the kids would go out to deliver. As gifts started to roll in, they would empty them onto the table, and then start re-gifting for the next round. It was not uncommon for a person to receive back gifts they had given out several times over the course of the day.
Not on Maale Gilboa. Here, they organize a hagrala (the only way I can think to translate it is “secret Santa”) where all those who sign up receive the names of two families, and you prepare only for them. Then, each family receives two nice baskets of food instead of a million bags of junk. We send samosentashen (for those who have never been to us for Purim, that’s samosas in the shape of hamantashen), rice, a chickpea-spinach curry, wine, chocolate, and a peanut butter banana bread. In return, we receive a fresh cheesecake (which went into the freezer for Shabbat), fancy nuts, wine and pancakes rolled with sweet cheese.
After distributing and receiving mishloach manot, we are invited to friends for a seudah. Just when we think the day is winding down … more festivities! In addition to the delicious meal, our friends have prepared games and prizes for the kids and adults. The party lasts until sundown, when Purim is officially over. We have 364 days to recover and prepare to do it all over again.
The week earlier, at the school where I teach in the city of Beit Shean, the staff was gathered for a meeting about preparations for their Purim carnival. Apparently, every year, each teacher raises money for prizes to distribute to their students. The quality of the prize depends on the success of their teacher. This year, one teacher proposed we try something different. She suggested that all the kids sell carnival tickets in advance, and the proceeds go into a common pool, so they can distribute the same kind of prize to everybody. When the prinicpal heard this idea, he was furious. His face turned purple and he shouted, “What are we – kibbutzniks?!”
Well! I had never been so insulted … or complimented. Even though, technically, we are not yet kibbutz members and we have only been on Maale Gilboa for a short time, I felt so proud to be a kibbutznik.
Emily Singer is a teacher, social worker and freelance writer. She is currently working on two books. Singer and her husband, Ross, were rebbetzin and rabbi of Vancouver’s Shaarey Tefilah congregation until 2004. The Singers spent two years in Jerusalem and then moved to Baltimore, Md., where Ross was rabbi at Congregation Beth Tfiloh and Emily taught Judaic studies at Beth Tfiloh High School, until they moved to Israel in 2010. They have four children.
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