Report-back in JFREJ newsletter

It’s July, and I’m (still) sending and receiving emails with the word “Purim” in the subject line. Why? Well, it’s the puppets. They can’t stay where they are; they need to be moved to a larger space. And so, even though the month of Adar is long past, the work of Purim continues. I realize this might seem slightly loony. Purim occupies one day on the calendar. It is -- according to my computer’s dictionary -- a “lesser Jewish festival.” Moreover -- isn’t it just a party? So why devote this much time to it? Here’s why: because my involvement in this annual event has offered me one of the most meaningful sites of activist, aesthetic, and community exploration I’ve ever known. It offers me the ecstatic opportunity to learn new things (about Jewish tradition, about current political campaigns, about how to use a glue gun); to participate in the work of making the world a better place; and to build new kinds of community. It also offers me the refuge of glitter, collectivity, and creativity during winter’s darkest days.

This year, winter was especially dark. On Christmas, Adrienne Cooper—the great queer yiddishist visionary who first dreamed up this particular Purim event—died of quick-moving cancer at the age of 65. A lot of us felt totally heartbroken, just ripped right open, by her death—and still did, when, just a few weeks after her passing, we met to begin the work of dreaming up and planning for Purim. It was good to gather together in that moment, and we held Adrienne’s memory close as we decided that we wanted to weave our grief into this year’s event—and alongside it, our joy that we’d been lucky enough to know her. We decided: we would mourn and celebrate her life and death by meditating on the body’s fragility (sickness, death) and its resilience (healing, ecstasy) with this year’s spectacle.

Purim, if you’re not familiar, is a carnival holiday—the forbidden is permitted, power relations supposedly upended, and costume and spectacle make political critique. It’s a holiday that members of JFREJ have celebrated, for the past ten years, alongside other artists and activists, in the form of a multimedia, politically engaged performance party. As always, we wanted to tie this year’s event to ongoing activist campaigns, so we invited JFREJers, the Occupy Wall Street Puppetry Guild, and others to a political education event at Great Small Works’ studio. There we heard presentations by Jodeen Olguín-Tayler from Caring Across Generations (CAG); JFREJ organizer Rachel McCullough; and HIV Prevention Justice Alliance’s Julie (JD) Davids. We also got a (culturally sensitive!) lesson in the New Orleans dance stylings of “sissy bounce” from Purimista Zach Scholl and a tutorial in Hasidic women’s line dancing by Jill Gellerman. Each presentation deepened our thinking about how to organize collectively—in the streets, in the legislative arena, and on the dance floor—to care for our bodies and the bodies of other people.

We spent the next two months in the usual frenzy of searching for an event space, corralling volunteers, herding musicians, learning songs, studying text, writing the script, lugging boxes of liquor, building puppets, and, in a radical new way, slowing down to listen to our bodies. Anna Jacobs and Hannah Temple shared personal experience and introduced us to radical writings on disability by authors including Eli Clare. In the end, we recast the Purim story as a tale about people who are both hurting and full of strength, facing the giant monster of the corporate healthcare system. We set the tale in “Shushan, Arizona,” a place “that prefigures the future of the U.S.: large percentages of the population are either over sixty five—maturing baby boomers who will soon need care—or immigrants ready to work and looking for a path to citizenship.” Jenny Romaine and Daniel Rozele Lang/Levitsky guided the audience though the organized chaos of the show—which featured beautiful choreography by Ariel Federow and J. Dellecave; Yiddish revery by Josh Waletsky and Gabe Levine; scenic madness by Abigail Miller and crew; and music remixes by Avi Fox-Rosen and friends. We heard testimonials about how different folks have given and received care. Members of Domestic Workers United performed as armored warriors of justice. We all delighted in a mash-up of the trad Purim song “LaYehudim Hayesa Orah” with Big Freedia’s sissy bounce hit “Excuse.”

And we sang a tribute to Adrienne Cooper: “Ballebuste, zisinke, zisinke zise ballebuste” -- which, in Jenny Romaine’s loving translation, means “sweet chief woman in charge, deliciously sweet chief woman in charge, ridiculously sweet and attractive woman in charge.” So, yes. I’m still working on Purim even though it’s the thick of summer. And I’m lucky, because doing so helps me hold close what I have learned from Purim—and Adrienne, and all the people who work together annually to remake meaningful diaspora Jewishness by way of the carnivalesque—throughout the many months of the year.

-- RACHEL MATTSON