Belated Purim thoughts

[chanaleh]

Walking home from shul Sunday morning -- with a light jacket on over my pirate costume, and carrying a grocery sack full of cookies and goodies that people had given me -- I realized, Hey! Purim really is the Jewish Halloween!

Note to self: Next year, you are to take on the mitzvah of mishloach manot. Every year you think it's really not important to you, and then every year you (a) feel sad that you're not giving anything to all the nice people who give you things (even though you know they're fulfilling their own mitzvah by giving it), and (b) go "Ooh! Cute little packages! I wish *I'd* made some up, I could have done this and this..."

But if I am not participating in the transaction by actually exchanging any food gifts, I make an effort to participate with kavanah (intention), as fully as possible, in the receiving of the gift -- by being mindful of the giver(s) of each packet and thinking gratefully of them as I eat the contents. [Word of advice: This is one reason it's helpful to include a "From:" note in your packages.] Right now it's laurens10 and tapuz (dried pears! yummy homemade hamantaschen!) and gilana (peanut butter cups! awesome polka-dotted cellophane bag! Tropical Tie-Dye Fruit Roll-Ups!). Yay!

Had some entertaining conversational moments with tapuz during and after tonight's synagogue board meeting, on such topics as (a) the future Rabbi Breindel and (b) my inception of the World's Only Falling August Tribute Page....

Comments

[mycroft.livejournal.com]

Yah, but the notion of eating someone's ears strikes me as, um, weird. Kind of like the Christians eating "the body of Christ" and drinking "the blood of Christ" -- sure, it's just symbolism (although there's a fiction about how they transform as they pass into your body), but ewww.

Anyway, it's more fun to make stuff than to buy it at a store. I've used a triangular mold to make "hat-shaped" chocolates before.

Not that I subscribe to either of the referenced religions.