Happy Purim!
9:09 p.m.
Today is the fast of Esther. For those of you unfamiliar with the Jewish holiday Purim, which falls tomorrow, Esther fasted before she met with her husband, King Xerxes (I learned his name as Achashverosh), in order to inform him that his adviser, Haman, was planning to kill all the Jews in Persia, a people to which she herself belonged, and was saving a special death for Mordechai her uncle whom the king held in especially high regard since Mordechai had once saved Xerxes� life. Purim, which translates as �lots� because Haman drew lots to determine when his various massacres were to be, is a non-religious holiday although it is traditionally celebrated with the reading of the scroll of Esther in the synagogue. People would write �Haman� in chalk on the soles of their shoes, and when his name came up in the reading, would stamp derisively. Children traditionally dress up in costumes of the story�s characters, King Xerxes, Mordechai, Esther, Haman and Vashti, who was Xerxes� first, banished wife. Nowadays they are just as likely to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as Mordechai, but that�s what popular culture does. In Israel, people get drunk and bop each other on the head with plastic hammers which make a high-pitched noise. It�s an all-round, fun holiday.
The reason I bring all this up is that Little Princess has a friend who is not Jewish, but wishes he were. He has adopted as many Jewish rituals as he can, including the keeping of kashrut and the observance of holidays. Somehow this fellow convinced his group of friends to fast today, and then prepared a feast which they consumed at our house, another reason to get the hell out of there and go to a restaurant. Upon our return home, we found Little Princess, her new boyfriend, and this Jewish-wannabe (their other friend had gone home already) sitting in the living room, drinking Manishevitz wine (you know, the really sweet stuff). Personally, I think this is very funny. The only Jew in the whole bunch is my daughter, who has been raised as a godless heathen.
As for my attempts to distance myself from my religious and cultural past, there is an expression that you hear from time to time which certainly sums it up quite neatly: You can run, but you cannot hide.
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