Celebrate Purim!

All are invited to celebrate Purim with us at Beth Jacob!  Here are some fun ways to celebrate this year:

Sunday, March 5: Ski, Ride, Purim

Monday, March 6: Complete Megillah Reading with Chabad of Vermont

Tuesday, March 7: Purim Party with fun for all ages!

Purim Resources

Learn how to make a home made grogger!

Some fun ideas for costumes!

Some delicious Purim cocktails to pour at home

Megillah Story and Video

Video from Rabbi Kevin Hale

From Sara Lisniansky- The megillah we currently have comes with a bit of a story.  In the spring of 2010, when our sanctuary was being torn down and rebuilt, everything within it was put into storage.  Somehow the megillah was misplaced, and no one could find it.   How could one lose a megillah?  But it was lost, and has not been found to this day.

In the summer of 2011, my brother, Shaul Leib Wallach z"l, died in Israel.  A man of few words but much knowledge and many skills, he had written a megillah of his own, unbeknownst to others.  I enquired his family as to its whereabouts, and they looked for it,  but could not find it.

After several years with no megillah at Beth Jacob, I commissioned Rabbi Kevin Hale, an authorized scribe with close connections to our community, to write one for us in my brother's memory.  He generously offered to match his style of lettering to that of my brother's, but I had no samples of it.  There was nothing but my memory.

Shortly before Purim in 2016, as Rabbi Hale was about to put quill to parchment, my brother's youngest son found his father's megillah "in his housewares."    He sent photographs of it just in time, and Rabbi Hale incorporated elements of my brother's script into his own.  He also hid his name, Shaul Leib, in the text.

The megillah's beautiful case was made by Ruth Coppersmith, and uses motifs from traditional Yeminite Jewish artwork, also in tribute to my brother's legacy.  I inscribed the case to honor his name and his memory, using these words: Gaon v'anav, tzadik u'shfal ruach.  

A story of the hidden and the revealed, appropriate for Purim.

As Ruth wisely remarked during those years of searching, "If God's name isn't in the megillah, and the megillah isn't in the synagogue, it does not follow that God is not in the synagogue."

During this very long pandemic, when we cannot be together in the synagogue, her words feel even more meaningful.