Purim Giveaway on Pop Judaica Opens Tuesday, Feb 16

Enter to win at: Pop Judaica's Chosen Blog.

Venetian Masks For Purim

At LimmudLA this week, I did an acting workshop where I was asked write and act a scene where I play Esther as Sarah Jessica Parker would play her. Esther was on a date with Isaac (as played by John Meyer). Talk about hiding identity!

Hiding our identity by dressing in costume is a way for us to experience the Purim story. The story is chock full of people mis-representing themselves and concealing their true identity. Esther is the major incognito who conceals her Jewishness from the King and becomes Queen. Of course, later she reveals she is a Jewess to save her people from Haman's plot to kill the Jews. Other cases of mistaken identity include Mordecai (Esther's Uncle and informant) hiding his language abilities and thus eavesdropping on the plot for Jewish extermination; Mordecai was able to listen with ease because the conspirators felt free to discuss: they thought he didn't know their language. Then Haman (the King's right hand man and striving Jew killer) is mistaken for Mordechai and thus, as it's discussed in the Talmud, Haman's daughter dumps her chamberpot on top of her own father's head! Oops. Shakespeare must have gotten his inspiration from the Purim Megillah.

This is why we dress in costume for Purim. Two years ago we started selling Venetian masks as an adult costume for Purim because Italian Jews, in the middle ages, were the first to adopt the custom of dressing in costume to celebrate Purim. The Italian Jews were inspired to wear costumes by the Roman Carnival, naturally. But the custom spread and stuck, likely because it is so appropriate for The Festival of Lots.

Wikipedia has a great page on Purim: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purim

Open E: Thank You For Helping Build Our Progressive Jewish Gifts Shop

It's nearing the end of January and I'm just now recovering from the Hanukkah season. Phew. With the last minute acquisition of Pop Judaica right before the Holiday season, it was a wild ride.

First and foremost, I want to express my gratitude toward our employees. ModernTribe could not have made it without Tiffany, Patrick, and Bart and I am eternally grateful for their magnificent loyalty and dedication. I'm not exaggerating: there were many days when they worked until midnight getting packages out and doing all the hundreds of things it takes to make this business run.

Thank you, customers, business partners, friends and family for helping us move forward toward our goal of providing identity-strengthening Jewish products. We grew significantly in our quest to make Judaica fresh, exciting and accessible to youthful Jews and to those not necessarily religious or traditional. There were also many set backs, but lessons are learned and thankfully our diversity of strengths help us bounce back from our mistakes and losses.

We found wonderful partners in the Jewish community, special thanks to: Limmud South East, Lisa Alcalay Klug, Jewlicious/ JConnectLA, Jewish Woman International and Meredith Jacobs, Jewcy.com and JDub Records. All of these organizations (people, in case of Lisa) are stellar contributors to Jewish American culture and wonderful friends of ModernTribe. We look forward to strengthening our bonds as we continue to grow.

Of course, thank you, thank you, thank you to our customers for whom we exist. We served thousands of you this year and, we hope, most of you have been thrilled with your purchases and customer service from ModernTribe. Thank you for your emails and phone calls of praise and also of criticism. Yes, we've made some mistakes: sent the wrong package, inadvertently mis-represented an item on the website, failed to meet your service expectations, and others. We take our mistakes seriously and are always working to improve our processes so that we can reduce human-error. Also, one thing you should feel secure about: if we make a mistake we will always do whatever we can to make things right for you. Thank you for your continued support and patronage.

Finally, and most importantly, thank you to my husband, Webb Roberts, whose unyielding support is, at times, so overwhelming it makes me want to cry. He not only has allowed us, as a family, to take significant (scary) financial risks, but listens and discusses the big issues (and the insignificant rabbit holes I sometimes fall into) with patience and wisdom.

Shalom to all. We look forward to 2010.