Imagine if the night of Purim you could walk into the home of Queen Esther. A drink in your hand—let’s say, a Huntsman… or even better, a HuntsHaman—you’d let her transport you into her sensual, mysterious world.

Maybe you’re in fifth-century B.C. Persia. Or maybe you’re in Trump-era New York City. It doesn’t really matter: let your imagination run wild…

A powerful and brave figure in the Jewish tradition, Esther will be at the center of an immersive performance taking place for two nights this week in Brooklyn, New York. FolksbieneRU, the Russian division of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (also affiliated with Genesis Philanthropy Group), has created this new interactive theatrical experience, House of Esther, as a creative way for New Yorkers to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim.

The eponymous heroine of the book of Esther is many things— seductress, regal queen, savior of the Jewish people. So this work might better be titled House of Esthers, given that Esther’s multifaceted nature is fractured into several entirely different people.

“The event explores the many faces of Esther,” said Lena Kushnir from the National Yiddish Theatre, explaining that the show will show six different characters inspired by Queen Esther, who will each emerge as a different strong, sexy, modern woman. Think of it as the Jewish answer to Sleep No More, the hit interactive experience that’s been running in New York since 2011 (House of Esther is content to run for two days, coinciding with the beginning and end of the holiday). 

Audience members will explore the space at their own pace and dive into a series of  thought-provoking, sexually-charged scenes involving the six Esthers. At the end of the performance, the space will transform into a club, with a bar selling Purim-inspired drinks, such as Queen’s Landing and Paper Cut.

So if you’re tired of feeling like Purim is a holiday for kids, it’s time to have a definitively more adult experience.

House of Esther is playing at The Paper Box on Wednesday and Thursday at 8 p.m. Entry is 21+, tickets are selling for 25$ online, 30$ at the door.

The post A Very Sexy Purim appeared first on Jewcy.

Yes, Haman is the more malicious character in Megillat Esther, amping up fantasies of petty revenge into attempted genocide. But he’s also straightforward and consistent. He insinuates that he started from nothing, and now he wants everything, and almost has it. He’s egotistical, but cunning and cautious, his ambition at least slightly tempered by common sense. Unlike Bigtan and Teresh, he doesn’t want to overthrow the king, just reap the benefits at being his right hand. Like when he’s forced to honor Mordechai, Haman toes the line when he knows it’s better to bide his time.

Achashverosh, on the other hand, is power and privilege writ large. Haman, it would seem, climbed the social ladder due to some sort of meritocracy, but the king was born into his position. He’s an example of not only absolute power corrupting absolutely, but it creating an absurd monster of a man.

Esther has always been a puzzling character in the Megillah, and her actions sometimes seem convoluted or confusing. Why, for example, does she invite Achashverosh and Haman to two different parties before summoning up the courage to confront them? Even then, her language seems somewhat stilted and restrained. She vocally insists that were only the freedom of her people at stake, as opposed to their lives, she would have remained silent. Esther as a puzzle has inspired analysis and Midrash for centuries. But look at her husband.

Achashverosh is a man who exiled (or perhaps killed) his queen because she refused him one command. He ordered the kidnapping of young girls to be taken as his concubines, ruining their prospects for a normal life. Despite his multitude of women, they would only even see him if he asked for them by name, leaving those he has forgotten to languish in what is essentially a pretty prison. Maybe it would be better to avoid notice altogether, but favor from the king seems to be an important currency— after all, the head eunuch helps Esther find favor because he likes her.

A man who forgot about a person who saved his life, as the king does with Mordechai, is definitely not going to remember the name of every girl he has forcibly taken from her home.

Achashverosh is a man of temper, who acts out like a child when angry, and then reassures himself by being magnanimous later. When Mordechai asks Esther to intervene on behalf of the Jews, she explains that approaching the king without being called risks death, and that he has not asked to see her in a month.

It’s been a month, and the king has not asked to see his queen— a king who disposed of the last queen because he got angry and was surrounded by cronies who egged him on. It seems ludicrous that Esther should be afraid to see her own husband, who chose her so deliberately and above so many others, but who knows what that last meeting was like? What if Esther displeased the king, and felt relieved to escape intact?

Esther knows Achashverosh well, and it’s clear that knowing him means fearing him. He’s a man with power he doesn’t deserve, and it turns him into a monster. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

At the end of the first party, either she falters, or realizes that the moment isn’t right. Achashverosh is unpredictable and all-powerful, and the two combined make him more dangerous than the rest of the Purim characters together, with all their planning and deliberation.

Achashverosh is often portrayed as absurd, a drunken fool who would rather throw parties than pay attention to his kingdom. But he’s a man who has never had to learn empathy, or real consequence. He’s just as likely to condone mass murder as he is to host a feast, and as a result, rules by terror of his dual nature, if unconsciously, like a Persian Bacchus. He treats men as his pawns and women as objects, the latter even past the usual  tropes about harems.  He’s a caricature, sure, but only of real men with real power, to this day.

Esther and Mordechai emerge victorious at the end of the Megillah, either because they outmaneuvered Haman, or were lucky or divinely guarded, or all of the above. But there’s something unsettling about ending up on top with a man who cycles through his inner circle faster than kings on Game of Thrones.

Welp, Chag Sameach. Maybe next year try making up a new sound effect for Achashverosh’s name during the Megillah reading. I’m thinking of yelling, “DOWN WITH THE PATRIARCHY!”

Image credit: Aert de Gelder, The Banquet of Ahasuerus, via Wikipedia.

The post Achashverosh, AKA the Patriarchy, is the Real Villain of Purim appeared first on Jewcy.

The purim ball was a fucking crazy time!

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) February 28, 2013

Lena Dunham gave the Purimspiel at last night’s Jewish Museum Purim Ball at the Park Avenue Armory. “Welcome to my bat mitzvah!” she said as she faced the well-heeled 800-person crowd in the massive party space filled with balloons streaming from the ceiling and sparkly decorations (in the name of journalism, I got a glitter tattoo).

The play was inspired by Eloise, the city child who lives in the Plaza, who Dunham called an “international, intergenerational symbol of just general precocity”—and naturally her favorite fictional character—and was written in the voice of a young Lena Dunham.

What started out as a potentially cloying narrative (“I am Lena, I am six. I am an artist’s child, and I live in New York City”) turned into a surprisingly revealing look at Dunham’s own understanding of her Jewishness—though Dunham interrupted herself early on as ‘grown-up Lena’ to insist parts about her parents had been somewhat fictionalized. She also added a very meta while-we-were-tweeting message: “If anything I say offends you, please don’t fucking tweet it because it’s going to really stress me out.”

Dunham was headlining the annual fundraising event as a favor to Museum Director Claudia Gould, a close friend of her mother, artist Laurie Simmons. Gould had asked Simmons if Dunham would participate in last year’s event, way back in a pre-Girls era, and Simmons wisely urged her to “give her a year.” But back to the Spiel:

“I suppose I’m Jewish, depending on which way you look at me. For instance, my mother is Jewish, and you are a Jew if your mother is a Jew—at least that’s what the Jews say,” Young Lena began. Her next line—”The Jews also say, ‘you’re too skinny, eat,'” got a hearty laugh from the crowd, who had just finished dining on short rib.

“The Jews don’t care who your dad is, unless he’s on the board of a major hospital,” Young Lena added, also to big laughs. (Tickets for the event, which this year honored artist James Rosenquist and AIG CEO Robert H. Benmosche, started at $1,250.)

Young Lena’s WASP father (a “White Angry Saxophone Protestant”) would go to synagogue but not wear a yarmulke—it looked like a bird pooped on his head, he said. Still, Young Lena learned early on about the hazards of Jewish hair and developed a very negative opinion of parents who sent their kids to camp (Camp Ramah got its second Dunham mention—the first was during Season 1 of Girls).

Then Young Lena assembled a group onstage to play the different roles in the Purim story—her mother played the principled Vashti, her doctor played King Ahashuerus, and boyfriend Jack Antonoff’s sister Rachel played Esther. The story was told quickly, a less dramatic version of a Rugrats holiday special, and ended with—spoiler alert—Esther convincing her husband Ahasuerus (even though we’re warned that Young Lena’s doctor is way too old to actually marry Rachel) to save all the Jews from Haman.

The whole thing was sweeter than what we’ve come to expect from Dunham, but just as sharp. She also did drop the F-bomb at a fundraiser for a Jewish institution, so there’s that.

Dunham spent the rest of the evening being politely accosted by girls in high heels and sparkly dresses. I was barred by a publicist before I could ask Grown-Up Lena the age-old question: was she an Esther or a Vashti?

There’s always Passover.

(Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)

Previously: Lena Dunham to Direct and Star in Her Own Purim Spiel
You Can Buy a Ring With Lena Dunham’s Face on it on Etsy

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The post Lena Dunham Wins Purim appeared first on Jewcy.

As a child growing up in suburban Connecticut, I was never a fan of any particular holiday. A notoriously picky eater, I was horrified by Thanksgiving, with its table full of mushy delicacies comprised of indistinguishable ingredients. Halloween always incited an existential struggle—I remember one year I wanted to be a geisha, but when I saw my fat face slathered in garish white paint, I realized with an unnerving clarity that I could never escape myself.

Easter and 4th of July were benign days spent at the country club nibbling on cold salmon or watching fireworks, respectively, and while it was always great to approach one’s bounty on Christmas morning, the rest of the day felt sad and empty after the presents were unwrapped. One year in particular, my brothers and I voraciously tore through our gifts like rabid baby animals, only to find that we had managed to complete Christmas in 20 minutes. The aftermath was the child’s version of a hangover: exhaustion, confusion, and shame at the human lust you revealed.

But there was always one holy day I lived for, one glorious evening in February when the most special people in the universe came out to shine their light on the rest of us: Oscar Night. Even before I was old enough to see the movies nominated for Best Picture, I anxiously settled in front of the television and watched with glee as the stars sauntered down the red carpet outside the Kodak Theater.

I envied them their long, flowing gowns, public acclaim, and the easy camaraderie with which they interacted with other chosen folk. I began taking theater classes at eight years old, and started spending Oscar night commercial breaks practicing my Best Actress acceptance speech while staring at myself in the bathroom mirror. (I’d deal with the distaste for costumes later.) When Anna Paquin, just a year my elder, won Best Supporting Actress in 1994, I was filled with hot envy as she panted nervously through her acceptance speech.

Though I’ve long abandoned the dream of ever receiving an Oscar nod, I’ve maintained my yearly ritual of watching the ceremony. Every year, I hole up at a girlfriend’s house, and we drink red wine and eat pizza and declare outfits horrible or amazing, rarely in between. We place bets on who will win what, and decry the Academy’s gross oversights when our favorites don’t nab the gold statue. To miss even a moment—including less exciting categories like “sound mixing” or “visual effects”—would be unthinkable.

So imagine my chagrin when I realized that this year, the Oscars will air on the 24th of February, also known the 14th day of the month of Adar, when Jews celebrate Purim. As the holiday approached, I received invitations to three events: the first a Megillah reading on Saturday night, the second a full-scale circus on Sunday afternoon (plus Megillah, round two), and the final one, a concert-cum-schmooze-fest starting at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday evening, which cuts seriously into Oscar-viewing time.

You might wonder, based on my references to the Christian celebrations of my youth, why that would be an issue at all, or why I wouldn’t just say “no” to one event and be satisfied with a single Megillah reading and a hamantaschen or two. Couldn’t I easily fit in at least the red carpet? But fact is that I have been steeped in Jewish learning for more than a year now, and I find myself feeling like this is a larger choice than it seems on the surface—one not of scheduling but of spiritual allegiance. Which is more important to me: old traditions or new?

My process started quietly—first it was a fascination with the Hasidim who walk the city streets alongside me, then an interest in the rich and varied literature, and finally a desire to kiss the mezuzah and say the Shema. I began writing about Jewish issues and events in New York City basically as an excuse to insert myself into Jewish environments, and every bit of learning I did, from Hebrew classes to memorizing prayers, I passed off as educational endeavors that would help advance my career.

It was a while before I could admit to myself, let alone anyone else, that all this study was about something deep in my heart, not a general exercise in cultural anthropology, and that what I wanted wasn’t just to observe and comment on Jewish life, but to live it. I wanted to convert to Judaism. Even today, I fear the reaction when I admit this pursuit of mine. Will people make assumptions about me, and why I’m choosing to make this change? Will they scoff in disbelief that I can do the difficult work that conversion entails?

But we know that on Purim, we commemorate that Esther—whose name is derived from the Hebrew satar, which means hidden—revealed her Jewish identity to her husband, the king, and saved the Jewish people from certain slaughter. If she can be brave in the face of death, then certainly I can be too in far less dire circumstances.

This Sunday, I emerge from the want-to-convert closet and declare proudly that my priorities are Jewish ones and my soul a neshama. It’s a small exchange I’m making—a secular costume party for a religious one, a feast of glamour for a feast of tradition, but for me, it feels defining. Instead of critiquing diamond accessories and filling out ballots, I will throw my lot in with the people I love.

Now if I could only decide what to wear…

(Image via Featureflash / Shutterstock.com)

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The post Trading in My Academy Awards Tradition For a New One: Purim appeared first on Jewcy.

Madonna has responded to the controversy—and lawsuit threat—that her use of a swastika during recent concerts has sparked, saying she uses the symbol (broadcast on the face of French Front National leader Marine Le Pen) to show “the intolerance that we human beings have for one another.”

According to the New York Times, which quoted a Brazilian television interview with the Material Girl:

The singer said the image was justified because the song concerns intolerance and explores the question of “how much we judge people before knowing them.”

“Music should be about ideas, right?” she said. “Ideas inspire music.”

Is this bizarre concert stunt actually about ideas, as Madge claims, or just attention? See for yourself:

Previously: Madonna Getting Sued for Marine Le Pen Swastika Image at Paris Concert
Related: Madonna Brands Le Pen With Swastika [Tablet Magazine] Send the Marine [Tablet Magazine]

The post Madonna Has No Plans to Stop Showing That Swastika During Her Concerts appeared first on Jewcy.

Today in Tablet Magazine, Abigail Miller examines the similarities between Hunger Games and, naturally, the story of Purim:

Regardless of the exact nature of the roles of their respective heroines, though, what Purim and the Hunger Games share is an understanding of the value of dressing up. If the Hunger Games trilogy teaches us about the power of costume, Purim teaches us to push at the lines between utopia, dystopia, and reality. When we listen to this story of Esther becoming queen, of the fate of the Jews catapulting from demise and triumph, and when we dress up as kings and queens, we are tracing out the extremes of power in a society, mocking authority, and, for a moment, feeling what it might be like to be the kings and queens we’ll never be.

Power Suits [Tablet Magazine]

The post What Hunger Games and Purim Have in Common appeared first on Jewcy.