Queen Esther, Illustrated

Have you listened to Episode 2: “Purim Explained, Conservative Women, and UCLA girl”?

On this past week’s episode of Hey! That’s My Hummus! you’ve heard that I observed the holiday of Purim at my synagogue this past Saturday night.  I also mentioned that at my synagogue (as well as many others) it is customary for both men and women to chant the reading of Megilat Esther (the Scroll of Esther which tells the story in Hebrew).

Our congregation has a new tradition where it comes to the reading: the main characters in the story have their “lines,” but most of the narrative is just that — told by a narrator.  We had one reader who chanted all of the narrative lines, and then a reader for each of the other character parts: one for King Achashverosh, one for Haman, one for Mordechai, etc.

My character to chant was that of Queen Esther. So naturally I dressed the part:

Shiny dresses up for the Jewish holiday of Purim as Queen Esther.

This meant shaving off the beard in full — something I hadn’t done since… well, the last time I played the part of Queen Esther two years ago. Sitting to my left (your right) is my son dressed as Shadow the Hedgehog. It’s customary for participants to dress up in costume on this holiday — traditionally as characters from the story, but it’s grown to become any costume nowadays.

I would assume Esther would look great with pink hair, right?

1 Comment

  1. faiqaMarch 25, 2011

    You get to drink AND cross dress? Come on. How is this even FAIR?!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to top