"The Seder as Jewish Technology"
Short video for Passover with Amichai Lau Lavie

On March 22, 2010 Repair the World and Uncommon Schools brought together several urban educators at NYC's City Winery to discuss what role the Passover story can play in informing their work as school teachers. Amichai Lau Lavie, founder of Storahtelling, kicked off the evening with a short presentation on the value of the Passover seder as a "technology" for communal dialogue, educational reform and self-exploration. To watch this short video in prep for Passover...

http://vimeo.com/10388243

Restoring the Sacred Story:
Can Judaism's Master Story Survive the Age of Information?

click here to view the full article

Storahtelling Performs 5 Mavens Last Weekend
Parshat Ki Tissa

This past weekend, FIVE different Storahtelling Maven teams traveled across America in search of the Golden Calf, just in time for the Golden Oscars. Amichai, Jake, Shira, Deanna, Naomi, Caryn, Marc and Bruce traveled to Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Colorado, New York and Florida, performing and teaching programs in synagogues, conferences and community centers for super diverse audiences. We all took the same Torah story – the weekly portion of Ki Tisa – but each script was original and wildly different from the others.

One of my greatest privileges being Storahtelling’s Associate Director is that each time a Maven team goes out on the road, the performer(s) call me after the gig and give a report on how everything went down. 95% of the time, it’s fair to say that the reviews are more-than-positive. This time, however, every single team (including my own) reported that this was one of the most successful, meaningful, enjoyable Maven gigs they’d performed. Every single team expressed great pride in the script they created. Every single team member felt humbled by their work’s effect on the congregation/community they’d visited. We want to share! Behold – five brief postcards from the Golden Calf.

-Jake Goodman

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‘Mounting Sinai’ - Amichai Lau-Lavie at the Nehirim Gay Jewish Men’s Retreat at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center, Connecticut

'Would you have danced around the golden calf? Raise your hand'

30 hands go up when I asked this question at the Nehirim Jewish Gay Men Retreat this past Saturday morning, as we danced with this terrible biblical text and wrestled with its meaning to our lives. 5 refused to dance ("too loud and messy"), and 2 abstained.

The weekly Torah portion "Ki Tisa" repeated the saga of idolatry and its aftermath - the first religious war in our history, a bloody day. The Storahtelling version that I presented focused on how the golden calf story illustrates not a bygone historical moment but an enduring depiction of a supposed split between the abstract and the sensual, the body and the mind, the image - and the word. For gay Jewish men who were raised, for the most part, being told that the Law of our People rendered our love an abomination - this split is super familiar and painful. And so yes, we wanted to dance.

People were invited to the Torah to stand as witnesses to the healing that we want - the words we've heard, the yearning we've felt, the violence we've endured and inflicted - all in the name of the search for love and intimacy. What did the builders of calf want after all? Intimacy, security, the divine in their midst, even if it wasn't Moses' abstract and faceless deity. Our yearning, in that room, no different - and no abomination, not worthy of hate.

I've told this tale before, and challenged congregations over the years to wrestle with the golden calf tale in many ways. But this was different - intensely personal, deeply redeeming. I'm so glad it touched the hearts of all present. Michael, who attended, a new friend sent me this:

"Learning with Amichai on Shabbat morning at the Storahtelling program was a full-body immersion in the Golden Calf story. He connected the text to his own story in a way that grabbed me by the heart and did not let go until I was there, in the desert, sobbing in the shadow of a G-d who was about to stand idly by while my people's leaders murdered me. This was a gut-level journey, unflinching in its honesty, into one of the most painful moments in our story. And right there, as my tears fell, I felt more a part of our people than I ever thought I would. Thank you, Amichai."

Thank you Michael, and thanks to all the brave men at Nehirim who danced with me around this fire. This story will never be the same again. It never is.

-Amichai

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MOSES IN MIAMI
This last weekend Shira Kline and I traveled to Temple Beth Am in Pinecrest, Florida to present “The Stories We Tell,” or our Storah version of Parshat Ki Tissa.
By Jake Goodman

So often when working on Maven scripts, we start off with grandiose goals and big ideas which we hope to translate into a compelling script that will meet our standard challenge of “changing their lives!” Each Torah portion is full of potential and exciting challenges that we cannot wait to sink our teeth into. Then, something happens. We begin working. What once seemed so clear becomes murky and impenetrable. The script structure, which in theory seemed so manageable, does not support our ideas. We get tired. Life gets the best of us. Frustration takes over. Deadlines loom. Always, we try our best but rarely are we completely satisfied with the result. Last weekends gig was, for me, one of those diamond in the rough exceptions.

Shira Kline and I—along with the assistance of our wise (and demented) Maven Mentor, David Wolkin—traveled to Beth Am in Pinecrest, FL last weekend to perform “The Stories We Tell,” our version of Exodus 32:1-14, the Golden Calf/God-wants-to-destroy-everybody-but-Moses-saves-us-in-the-end story. This was perhaps the most ambitious Maven I’ve ever worked on: we both played characters (two charming and extremely good looking angels) instead of having one of us play the MC/Narrator; we incorporated music; it was hilarious; we went extremely deep and still managed to connect all of our outlandish ideas to the text in an accessible way to the intergenerational audience; we had fun.

We based our narrative off a midrash which states that, when creating the world, the Great Creator basically had an anxiety attack: what if this new world doesn’t work out? So, God created a backup plan: if, in the future, the Israelites do not accept the Torah God will return everything to chaos. Do over! Shira and I each played angels (think of the two Jim Henson movie critic muppets, only more spastic).

We based our bullseye off of a quote oft used by Storahtelling by Nigerian poet, Ben Okri:

“Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will face the future consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that help them face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings.”

The whole story, then, became an examination of the way we each interpret events, the stories we tell ourselves, and how these stories can be destructive. We realized that the Israelite people were telling themselves the story that they could not function without a leader and when they felt abandoned by Moses and God (they were left alone for over 40 days, for crying out loud), they had a golden calf built to lead their way. Aaron recognized their need and built it for them, but changed the story for them by telling them that, the next day, they would use this calf to have a celebration for YHWH, Hebrew God.

God, however, did not see things this way and, perhaps, felt abandoned. Remember, this is not long after the Creator pulled out all the stops to get the Israelites out of slavery and Egypt, only to see them worshipping another. So perhaps God felt abandoned, and that is the reason God wanted to destroy all the Israelites. During the stretch, we asked the people to be like Aaron, and try to help God change the story. What did God need to hear to change the story, and not destroy everyone?

We ended the stretch with a challenge:

“For the third and final aliyah, we'd like to call up all those who are willing to take the same challenge we are giving God: to examine the stories we each tell ourselves, in our lives, today. And once we figure out what they are, to examine whether they are helping us or not.

• These could be very old stories: women are not as good as men;

• They could be stories that hold us back: I'm not good enough; I don't deserve...whatever; I'll never be happy; nobody understands me

• Or they could be something else: I'm better than everybody else”

The gasps of recognition in the audience surprised me. They got it. The whole story clicked for them in that moment, it seemed. For me, it was a magical moment.

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Face Time with God, Sort of: By Deanna Neil, live from Blue Bell Pennsylvania

The part of Ki Tisa that has always struck me (maybe because it was my Bat-Mitzvah portion) is Moses asking to see God—and what God was willing to reveal. So, this was what my focus was for my solo Maven this past weekend in Blue Bell, PA. Just look at these comparative translations, and you can see why Ki Tisa is a theological and translation goldmine. God talks to Moses, in Exodus, chapter 33, verse 23:

JPS Translation: And I will take away My hand, and thou shalt see My back; but My face shall not be seen.'

Aryeh Kaplan Translation: I will then remove My protective power, and you will have a vision of what follows from My existence. My essence itself, however, will not be seen.

Onkelos/Aramaic: and I will take away the word (dibberath) of My Glory, and thou shalt see that which is after Me, but My Aspect shall not be seen.

Pseudo-Jonathan/Aramaic: And I will make the host of angels who stand and minister before Me to pass by, and thou shalt see the handborder of the tephilla of My glorious Shekinah; but the face of the glory of My Shekinah thou canst not be able to see.

The varying translations alone reveal how different scholars have interpreted God—from the literal to the metaphorical. After asking people in the congregation what it could possibly mean to see God’s “face” or God’s “back”, I left them with a few explanations that have always stood out to me.

The word for “face”, “existence”, “Aspect” is actually PANIM, and it can also be translated as “presence” or even “before”, like LIFNEI. But the root can also come from PNIM, bifnim. The unbelievable challenge for us is to understand that God’s face PANIM is going with us, is everywhere, although invisible, and that it’s also BIFNIM, PNIM it’s also within us. So maybe PANIM is something that we can never see, because it’s inside.

Even though we don’t see God’s face, we do get to see God’s “back”. The word isn’t actually “back”, that would be GAV. The word is ACHORAI, which can be translated as “afterwards”, “what’s behind”, “what follows”, “that which is after me”, “the handborder of the tephilla”. What does this mean to see God’s “afterwards”? Some say it’s that humans can never see the future, but we can see the past. Others say that Moses saw the shadow that falls on our lives when God isn’t there anymore—so he knew what was holy and what wasn’t. The orthodox Chatam Sofer teaches that we can only see God’s work when we look back on our lives, we can only perceive it after the fact. But the most unanimous answer I received from the congregation, and the one that still resonates most with me, is that the “afterwards” is what God has left us behind in our tangible world, leaving us to be God’s permanent partners, seekers and interpreters.

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LIVE FROM THE LOVE SHACK!
Notes from Bonai Shalom in Boulder, Colorado

by Bruce Shaffer, for the Mile High Mavens

For two aliyot, Love Shack, the Mile High Mavens’ production of parsha Pikudei [verses 40:22-35], more resembled Fight Club. Two cagey sibling rivals, Moshe (Rabbi Marc Soloway) and Aaron (this writer) occasionally jabbed but mostly circled for control of the sacred space. Aaron asserting into his Priestly role, and Moshe defending his identity and relevancy.

It was about even when Aaron got his feelings hurt while trying to own the copper washbasin, and stormed out in a hissy fit leaving Moshe wrestling his crisis, alone. With sage-storyteller Caryn Aviv reaching across the millennia, audience members shared their experiences of loneliness, regret, and uncertainty to cajole Moshe back into constructive consciousness. Ehiyeh asher Ehiyeh, he recalled hearing. Embrace this moment of opportunity: IT will be what it will be.

In the last aliya, backed by those who’d blessed the torah for surviving their own uncertainties, Moshe and Aaron reconciled over the Mishkan’s finishing touch (a closure, of course), allowing the Mishkan’s completion. A Love Shack, at last, and a first for the Mile High Mavens – our premier in Boulder. Here are a few reviews:

The Storahtelling was quite engaging, and for me, came to an emotional peak when the two brothers, Moshe and Aharon, cut the tension that had been building between them, with a deep look into each others eyes and a hug. This authentically demonstrated moment - of love in spite of differences - not only brought tears to my eyes, it reminded me how simple it can be to mend the difficulties that can arise in relationship.
-Charna Rosenholtz, MA., & Torah study leader

The Mile High Mavens were engaging and enlightening! After years of re-reading the same boring Mishkan specs, Marc, Bruce, and Caryn skillfully drew me into a colorful world of anxiety, loneliness, frustration, and tension. Even my 3-year-old daughter spent the entire ride home asking difficult questions about the relationships between Moses, Aaron, and G-d -Daniel Sherwinter

Thanks for helping us work through the mishigas around the mishkan. StorahTelling is great edutainment! -Kathryn Bernheimer, Boulder JCC Program Director

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END THE BLAME GAME By Naomi Less
Location: Queens, NY - Reform Temple of Forest Hills
Show: In Treatment: Sessions at Sinai
Maven: Naomi Less

Family therapist Dr. Singit, that's Dr. Lo-sing cracks open an family drama with an aim to uncover why we play the Blame Game so much in our families. The question she poses to the congregation is: how do we stop the cycle?

In Ki Tissa - Moses, upon seeing the cavorting family and the oracle/ouijia board/golden bovine his "kids" created, "yichar af" (translated as becomes angry, enraged, etc. A closer translation is: flaring his nostrils in anger. Can you picture: smoke coming out? How angry does someone have to be to flare their nostrils. A gentleman in the talk back further "drashed" this moment: what animal is famous for flaring its nostrils? A bull, of course. And what did the Israelites make as their idol to take the place of Moses and help lead them?? A baby bull - a calf. Moses shows anger many times in the course of their journeys. Maybe when the people need a substitute for him, they went to the part of him that they remember clearest. The dark side of him, the anger side. As a father figure, perhaps Moses sees that the family is clinging to his shadow side - the dark side - the nostril flaring side...and maybe, just maybe, this is why he breaks the tablets. He's embarrassed.

This gentleman said this midrash only came to him because of the depths we went to as a community in looking closely at the story, at the different family members and what their part is in the conflict. When we look deeply inside and can recognize each of our parts in conflict, that's when the blame game ceases.

Check out pictures from Purim 2010!!

click here to see more Purim pictures!

The night of No Revenge – Purim 5770

A note from Rebetzzin Hadassah Gross

Kinderlach!

Tonight, tonight, it’s Purim again! 5770 years since the Garden of Eden and oh so many Purims since I strolled, with Papa, in the parks of Budapest, dressed as a Hungarian peasant girl. I looked like a perfect shiksa… which came in handy just a few weeks later... Nevermind. Where was I?

Purim! Why is tonight different from all other nights? Because tonight we wear masks and find our true faces behind them. Who we are in private is public. If we dare. And tonight is special. Tonight we will have blood on our hands – or at least a Bloody Esther, the house drink, in our hands. If you dare. I dare you. And adore you.

So, nu, tonight is a homecoming: for the Queen inside every one of us, our own worst enemy within, our inner child and outer loved; the royalty, the courage, the good sense and the non-sense. The holy fool full moon night of Purim, Queen Esther’s night, is upon us. What a Mitzvah, what a glamorous complicated celebration of life in all its messiness. I adore it.

So, tonight, kinderlach, go back inside the Garden of Eden, before the first bite of evil and good, right or wrong, Jewish or Goyish, man and woman, both and neither, left or East. I dare you.

Welcome to the garden, kinderlach, to the palace, to the wine cellar of time here at the City Winery. L’chayim! (Drink sensibly. A little.) If not now – when? Later?? Mazel tov!

R. Hadassah Gross

Jewish Revenge & Kosher Porn:
How 'Inglorious Basterds' inspired the making of 'Bloody Esther'

a note from Amichai Lau-Lavie

The making of Bloody Esther was a rollercoaster. We knew we wanted to challenge the last chapter of the Scroll of Esther – the one in which 75,000 Persians are killed by the Jews. Post Goldstone Report, post so many wars and hostilities – can we put the guns down, even on Purim?

‘Inglorious Basterds’ fueled the fires of bloodlust. We watched it as we worked on the show and decided to go with it – and NOT kill Haman, and not his ten sons and no Persians at all. Even as a fantasy of power and revenge – we wanted to try another way. Even Hadassah Gross, Holocaust Survivor and fierce bitch that she is, agreed... the rest is history. We’ll figure out what to do next year. The massacre behind the mask is not going away. We must deal with it, one way or another.

Read below - some of our inspiration…


Excerpts from ‘Hollywood’s Jewish Avenger’
By Geoffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic

In ‘Inglorius Basterds’ Tarantino managed to create something that seems entirely new: a story of emotionally uncomplicated, physically threatening, non-morally-anguished Jews dealing out spaghetti-Western justice to their would-be exterminators…The horror-movie director Eli Roth plays a Basterd known as the “Bear Jew,” whose specialty is braining Germans with a baseball bat. Roth told me recently that Inglourious Basterds falls into a subgenre he calls “kosher porn.”

“It’s almost a deep sexual satisfaction of wanting to beat Nazis to death, an orgasmic feeling,” Roth said. “My character gets to beat Nazis to death. That’s something I could watch all day. My parents are very strong about Holocaust education. My grandparents got out of Poland and Russia and Austria, but their relatives did not.”

Roth told me that Tarantino came to his home for Passover just as he was wrestling with the final act of Basterds. “I was his Jewish sounding board,” Roth said. “‘Would a Jew do this, would a Jew do that?’ He kind of didn’t have an ending. But after the seder, he said, ‘I’m going home to finish.’ He understood that we are still pissed off about things that happened to us 3,000 years ago. At the end of the seder, we talked about how the Jewish thing was to remember, that there was no absolution.”

My ambivalence about some of the excesses of Inglourious Basterds fully emerged only in the days after our conversation. I had met Tarantino less than 24 hours after I first saw the film. When I came out of the screening room the night before our interview, I was so hopped up on righteous Jewish violence that I was almost ready to settle the West Bank—and possibly the East Bank. But when my blood cooled, I began to think about the morality of kosher porn in the context of current Middle East politics. Some of this was informed by my own experience in the Israeli army, in which I saw my fellow Jewish soldiers do moral things—such as risking their lives to prevent the murder of innocent Jews—as well as immoral things, like beating the hell out of Palestinians because they could….

But why risk creating sympathy for Nazis at all? Why have any scene that, in Neal Gabler’s words, “conventionalizes Jews, puts them in the same revenge motif as everyone else”?

Read more here

Get Up, Stand Up: Storah Purim does Israel!

By Annie Lewis

“All’s fair in love and war, babe,” the King tells her.

“Would you have said that if the Jews had been killed, too?” she wonders.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

If I am only for myself, what am I?

If not now, when?

- Hillel



Down in the desert, American high schoolers fill a community room in Purim get-up, wearing animal ears and mock tattoos inspired by the cast of Jersey Shore. They have just swapped out of army uniforms, after a week of Gadna, a program designed to be a taste of life as a soldier in the IDF. This is a group of EIE (Eisendrath International Exchange) High School students in Israel, and it's Purim - Saturday Night, February 27th and we just arrived Kibbutz Sde Boker way south in the middle of the Negev desert.

We arrive from Jerusalem with an interactive translation of Megillat Esther, framed around the theme of taking action when there is personal risk involved. The story opens at the after-after-after party at the house of King Ahashverosh (Josh Weinberg) a frat-guy, waving around his Ninentendo Wii. His power-hungry party-planner Manny (Assael Romanelli), orders a shipment of refreshments on his Blue Tooth. Vashti (Anne Lewis), an aspiring professor of Gender Studies, refuses to be interrupted during her women’s study session of Judith Butler’s theory. Uncle Mordechai (Weinberg), a Jewish mother, worries about his little Esther’s trip to the big Palace to audition for the Reality TV Show “Dancing with the King.” He makes sure to send her off with plenty of Purell and kugel.

All is thrown in the air when Manny is promoted to the King’s second in command, and dubbed, “The Man.” Mordechai refuses to submit to Ha-Man’s authority and the conniving advisor to the King conjures up a plan for the end of the Jewish people. Esther goes from enjoying the luxurious lifestyle of the palace to desiring a life of meaning through connection to something beyond herself. When all is flipped on its head, and Mordechai celebrates the Jews’ violent victory over their neighbors, Esther questions the unforseen consequences of her action on behalf of her people.

“All’s fair in love and war, babe,” the King tells her.

“Would you have said that if the Jews had been killed, too?” she wonders.

In an atmosphere of levity, it was difficult to mix in discussion of the gravity and gore of the words of this seasonal scroll (read lyrically by Yosef Goldman). The EIE group laughed at the slapstick rapport between the King and the Man and rocked out to Beyonce’s Single Ladies during the search for a new queen. On the ride home, crowns and wigs aside, we reflected on the challenge of wearing the hats of educator, facilitator, performer, and character all at once. All in all, we had a freilikh evening with our audience, a group of young people who have made a big decision to step out of their usual frameworks to spend the semester in Israel. We hope we left them with something to chew on after the humantaschen were gone.

This Storahtelling Production was created and led by the Storah Israel team: Annie Lewis, Josh Weinberg, Assael Romanelli and special guest Yosef Goldman.

THE DAY AFTER PURIM

Poem by Zoot the Muppet
indiaextravaganza@gmail.com

The Day After Purim

What? I am supposed to go back
to being who I was the day before yesterday?

The circus fired the clown. They said,
Take off your mask - give it back to us.

He said, what do you mean?
There is no going back like that.

You can have it, take it - but I remain.
You will not see me anymore - but I’m still here.

I look from in - the mask is irrelevant.
You look at out - the mask is everything.

Maybe there is something between these -
a deeper envisioning.

The piano-man moves his hands beyond the keys,
this way and that - there is music there!

He hears it - even if you don’t.

A teardrop runs across your face
and reveals the world.

The clown’s colleagues ask him what he’ll do,
now that his clowning-around has been terminated.

He says, first I’ll go completely crazy,
I’ll be a rooster in the coop of the king.

I’ll wake the other roosters at strange hours of the night,
and lay scarlet eggs filled with rubies.

And then, I’ll become the prince.

I’ll convince the people I’ve gone straight.
I will tell them I’m wise, and I’ll offer them wisdom

and it will be entirely nonsense.

Blessed is the one who remembers the face.
Blessed is the one who continues to wear the mask.

Super Jew!: A Purim Family Show
StorahSteps at the 14th Street Y

By Jessica Bay Blyweiss

It was that time of the year again last weekend, the time when we rock our favorite frocks, eat and be merry. Wait, I think I actually do that most of the year, but this time it was a little more entertaining because I was surrounded by super heroes, princess, animals, pirates, butterflies, dragons and colorful people. It was Purim and I had the joy along with Naomi Less to Maven Super Jew!, Storahtelling’s family Purim show at the 14th St Y.

We had done the show last year for a very small crowd from Natan (www.natan.org) at the City Winery and now prepared for our stint in a bigger arena. Little did I know that we would be cramming as many people as could fit into the theater of the Y. It was a joyous thing to see so many families joining us, with so many amazing children in tow, not to mention all the Ageless Kids who came to support us. The children colored and illustrated parts of three chapters from the Megillah while getting situated that were then attached together and read by the lovely Naomi during the show. It was a little overwhelming at first knowing that a few adjustments had to be made on the spot due to the amount of people but we started off on our SuperJew Journey.

Even in the darkest times, there are so any things to be happy about. In the wake of earthquakes, wars and bad economies we can still find things to be happy and grateful about. Being together with so many people in a beautiful space getting to read from the Megillah was something to be grateful for. The theater filled with music and the sounds of children chattering asking questions. Parents were getting chuckles here and there.

We were able to bring a good amount of the children on stage to show off their wonderful costumes - even a Queen Esther who pointed out that, yes, she did make her own crown. I was a little jealous as it was almost my turn to take on the role of Esther and save all my people from the Evil Haman (aahfhhggrrrgrgrhff!!!) Esther was afraid to be who she was. On the inside she was a Jew and a scared young woman. On the outside she was beautiful Persian Queen and she looked brave. Her costume helped her through a rough time but in the end she wasn't afraid to be who she was and because of that saved all her people.

When we asked at the end of the story what miracles the kids had seen with their miracle goggles on, it was just that: that Esther had saved her people, and she took responsibility for who she was.

Overall, even in a semi-chaotically filled theater of children, with groggers, snacking on Hamentashen, our message got across. After the show was over and I was mingling with the crowd some shy kids came over and started lingering by me. I looked at their parents and they said that the kids wanted to give me a hug goodbye (that made it all worth it). If we can entertain as well as teach and make the children excited to attend our shows and want to come back over and over, then we've accomplished our goal, and taken responsibility for our community and our children.

“Bloody Esther,” Storahtelling’s Purim Schpiel Reviewed on JewSchool

By The Wandering Jew

Last night I went to Storahtelling’s Bloody Esther Purim event. If you’re not familiar with Storahtelling, founded in 1999 by Executive Director Amichai Lau-Lavie, they’re a ritual theatre company. Their shtick is bringing “translations” of ancient Jewish texts to life by renewing the words through modern interpretation. Today, Storahtelling works around the world with people of all ages, training educators and producing shows that add modern meaning to ancient texts. Additionally, Storahtelling began 5770 by establishing residency at the 14th Street Y, where they have monthly performances for kids of all ages, including StorahStage - educational programming for 2-5 year olds.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect at their Purim shpiel, but my limited expectations were surpassed. As Hadassah, a drag queen, emceed the shpiel and narrated the megillas Esther-based story, the characters, in all their glory, and with new attitudes, came to life on stage. The
audience at City Winery had a great time and soaked up every minute of the performance.

Highlights, according to the people sitting around me:

The angel of dead Vashti, dancing around stage in lingerie and angel’s wings made at least a few peoples’ dreams come true.

Chester the court jester cuddling up to Hadassah… and his loin cloth’s meandering over the course of the night.

The enchanting Galeet Dardashti, a Middle Eastern musician, who read the megillah with such an incredibly powerful and beautiful voice.

Esther deciding that she didn’t just want to save the Jews, she wanted to personally kill Haman (and Mordechai, and the king).

Jewschool’s SBB’s opening the show, bringing the Amalek massacre to life by screaming and running through the venue with a red-splattered white sheet, where she nearly knocked over a waitress with about 20 glasses of wine.

click here to view the original