Days of Wine and... Purim

The scent of Purim is in the air!

Then again, so is the scent of dead fish, raw meat, fruits, vegetables, and about forty thousand different flavors of halvah. That's because I'm traipsing through Machneh Yehudah, searching for components for my Purim costume.

It is a time-honored tradition among yeshiva bochurim learning in Israel to invade Machneh Yehudah around Purim time. Unless you plan on buying a bear suit for 500 shekels, the standard costume consists of going to the cheap clothing stores in Machneh Yehudah and buying whatever weird clothing you can get your hands on, and mix-'n-matching them in the worst possible way.

This proves not to be too difficult in terms of finding the stuff - since virtually all the clothing sold there is fair game, in terms of outlandishness - but it can be quite challenging to get the stuff you want before anyone else beats you to it. The simple, cost-effective solution is to fire several warning shots into the air with a .22 caliber pistol, then move in and collect the bounty. Should you find yourself arrested, however, it could potentially ruin your Purim plans, so use the aforementioned idea with caution.

While you're in Machneh Yehudah, it pays to check out some of the other stalls there - particularly the ones selling halvah, since they give out free samples. For the uninitiated, halvah is a sesame seed concoction with the density of cement, only less tasty in some cases, and containing more calories per cubic inch than you would have thought physically possible. To compensate for the ridiculous amount of calories, the shopkeepers add chocolate, coffee, cinnamon, mud, roofing cement, etc. - okay, it doesn't compensate much calorie-wise, but it does make it taste somewhat better, at least.

To lure people into buying halvah, they offer free samples - tiny cubes of one flavor or another, each one with enough fat content to clog a major artery faster than traffic in the Battery Tunnel during rush hour. The idea is that after surviving one piece, you'll surely be compelled to buy a larger chunk that will take care of your caloric needs for a month. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I usually just take a few free samples, then lay down and roll home.

When you're done with Machneh Yehudah, you can check out the "drinks district" - a series of drink stores on Shmuel Hanavi, between Bar Ilan and Givat Moshe. My favorite among these is A. A. Pyup, a store that sells everything from (relatively) tame sodas, to alcoholic beverages with enough kick to stun an elephant. Here you can find many a wine connoisseur (which is French for "unbearable snob") shopping for fine wines for Purim. I, personally, come here for a nice bottle of wine for my Rebbe, and then whatever the cheapest stuff is that'll get me drunk (not trashed, chas v'shalom - just slightly drunk) on Purim.

I haven't actually spent much time in Geula yet, though that's bound to be a fun place as well, as long as you avoid getting bleached. I have - to my credit - been to the Armenian Shuk in the Old City, which is a great place if you like to negotiate (defined as "yell at the top of your lungs at the Arab shopkeeper that the item is too expensive, then storm out in a huff") prices. Bargaining is not my forte, so I brought along a friend to help me out, and we came away with a white robe and pants for only 120 shekels. Not too shabby.

As Purim creeps ever closer, the music gets louder, the streets livelier, and the scenes ever more chaotic. It's a great time to be around - the matzav is incomparable. The only real drawback is, it's a great time to gain weight. And those halvah samples aren't helping any...

Raw meat. Next time, I'm gonna take a sample of raw meat instead.