Now that Purim has passed (unless you live in Yerushalaim or another walled city and celebrate Shushan Purim ) , the countdown begins. There is a full lunar month between Purim (the 14th of Adar) and Pesach (the 14th of Nissan). Which really isn’t very much time at all, especially when youR...

Hi there! Kara here. Just a simple girl who grew up in a Southern Baptist/ evangelical/ Methodist home south of Chicago. Then converted to Judaism through a well-known conservative synagogue in Los Angeles. I never bought that whole Holy Trinity theory. But that’s another story… My first Purim w...

“They were to observe them as days of feasting and merrymaking (y’mei mishteh v’simha) and as an occasion for sending gifts to one another and presents to the poor.” -Esther 9:22 Other than reading and/or hearing the Megillah, every mitzvah of Purim is mentioned in this one v...

If you’re reading the Jew And The Carrot, it’s highly likely that you’re interested in food and sustainability. So, when you’re making your mishloach manot you’re probably thinking about the health and quality of the food you’re giving your friends and making efforts to minimize waste as...

  Purim is a pretty strange holiday. The text we read, Megillat Esther , isn’t a typical biblical book; it makes no mention of the big guy upstairs. Its heroine, a nice Jewish girl bunking with her uncle, ends up in the arms of the non-Jewish king (oh gosh!), and exchanges certain things, namely ...

One custom I have always liked about Purim (aside from the drunken revelry, of course) is Mishloach Manot, those fun Jewish goodie-bags that people give to each other during this festive holiday.  It’s like Trick-Or-Treating in reverse:  the candy, wine, cookies, etc come to you -no need to ...

I love the Purim season as much as the next Jew, but there is always one thing missing from my Purim hype: Hamantashen. It isn’t that I don’t like hamantashen.  On the contrary, I love hamantashen so much, I eat them all year round! This video is my (short) personal quest to find out if...

My father’s all-purpose costume for Halloween and Purim turned him into a five-foot-eight sunflower, a three part transformation that made an American Jew into an American seed into a symbol of Jewish passing in ancient Persia. Essentially, he would put on a green turtleneck and his green cour...