best Megilla reading ever!
Mar. 18th, 2003 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThat was fantastic!
This year, for the first time, my congregation added a "kinder, gentler Megilla reading" on Purim morning. The idea was that this one would be for adults, particularly adults who lack the patience for hundreds of out-of-control children who lack "off" buttons. (Blotting out Haman's name with noise is fine -- and required. But IMO you've got to be done with the noise before you get to the next "Mordechai".) It also adds a reading during the day; I gather that many Reform congregations just do the evening one.
We had a delightful reading, in English so everyone could follow, with commentary (improvised, for the most part), puppets, and other bits of silliness. Our rabbis claim that the silliness was unscripted, and the one who was reading first said he didn't even know the other had brought puppets until he noticed something going on in his peripheral vision. :-) And we read the whole megilla, not an abridged form like some congregations do. (I think they do that largely to placate kids who bore easily.)
I really hope they keep this reading next year!
I learned this morning that our congregation owns a megilla that is almost 200 years old. (The date written on it is 1804.) It's Hebrew/Aremaic, of course, and probably pasul (not kosher for ritual use) because of all the patches that have been made to it, but it's nifty. They passed it around so we could get closer looks.
And as an aside, I had never heard of etrog liquer before. Yum!
This year, for the first time, my congregation added a "kinder, gentler Megilla reading" on Purim morning. The idea was that this one would be for adults, particularly adults who lack the patience for hundreds of out-of-control children who lack "off" buttons. (Blotting out Haman's name with noise is fine -- and required. But IMO you've got to be done with the noise before you get to the next "Mordechai".) It also adds a reading during the day; I gather that many Reform congregations just do the evening one.
We had a delightful reading, in English so everyone could follow, with commentary (improvised, for the most part), puppets, and other bits of silliness. Our rabbis claim that the silliness was unscripted, and the one who was reading first said he didn't even know the other had brought puppets until he noticed something going on in his peripheral vision. :-) And we read the whole megilla, not an abridged form like some congregations do. (I think they do that largely to placate kids who bore easily.)
I really hope they keep this reading next year!
I learned this morning that our congregation owns a megilla that is almost 200 years old. (The date written on it is 1804.) It's Hebrew/Aremaic, of course, and probably pasul (not kosher for ritual use) because of all the patches that have been made to it, but it's nifty. They passed it around so we could get closer looks.
And as an aside, I had never heard of etrog liquer before. Yum!
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Date: 2003-03-20 03:28 pm (UTC)