Kineret water level
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F WWW.KOLEINU.CO.IL VOLUME I ISSUE 3
(ט‘ אדר ב‘ תשע“א פרשת צו )זכור
E E R MARCH 15, 2011
A m e m b e r o f t h e 5 To w n s J e w i s h T i m e s F a m i l y o f N e w s p a p e r s
!פורים שמח
HAPPY PURIM! Yabba Dabba Doo Shmu’s Shmooze Esther, or perhaps the day before. We would habitually preAs I sit watching my family pare the packages only just pripack the 100+ mishloach manot or to going to hear the megillah. bags we will deliver over Purim With a large garage, we had and Shushan Purim, I am struck plenty of room to spread things by the extremely odd juxtapo- out and store the packages, yet we never felt the need to prepare them too far in advance. Each kid was allotted ten packages to distribute to the friend of their choice, with another 50+ going to our friends, relatives, and neighbors. We had a list that was pretty stable, with a couple of additions and subtractions each year, but nothing maEmail us YOUR picture in costume to editor@koleinu.co.il jor. We had a routine there and it was very organized sition of how we have changed and always completed in the our habits from being in the U.S. last day or two before Purim. Except for the “very orgato being here in Israel. In America, we used to buy all the ingre- nized” part, it sounds standard dients for our package and store Israeli. Last-minute things getthem in the closet until Taanit ting done without any real con-
BY SHMUEL KATZ
cern or panic. A set routine that we would follow on a regular basis. Which is strange, because here in Israel we have become much more aggressive about getting things done early. The mishloach manot ingredients were bought more than 10 days before Purim. We packed them the very next day. And oh yes, the entire festival of Purim has become much more focused upon the kids than we ever dreamed it could be in the U.S. Even though we always participated in our shul’s mishloach manot program, unlike here in Israel, that participation did not preclude our delivering at least 30+ personal packages to our neighbors and other shul families who had also been a part of the shul’s mishloach manot. Our list was at least equal to or greater than the sum of all the kids’ lists, be-
YABBA DABBA DOOOOOOO!!!!
cause our family gave out the majority of the packages as a group. Here, we hardly give out any personal packages. A couple of relatives. A few friends who are not members of the same shul we are. That’s it. We might have all of 15 people on our list in a big year, much less in a normal year.
יהי זכרם ברוך Udi Fogel, a”h
Ruth Fogel, a”h
Yoav Fogel, a”h
Elad Fogel, a”h
The kids have totally flipflopped with us. Our teenage daughters gave out almost 50 each last year, so many that they were forced to deliver packages without their parents as chauffeurs, because there simply would not be enough time in the day to make so many stops. (We put our feet down this year and are holding them—we hope—to closer to 25 each.) There is a certain frenzy that we encounter on Purim here that was not as prevalent in the old country. Even though the neighborhood we lived in was heavily Jewish with a large number of religious Jews, and the yeshiva bachurim would run from house to house in their stretch Humvees in a mad dash to collect tzedakah, the day was essentially a family day. We deliv-
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Hadas Fogel, a”h