Here's a children's book about Purim that my frum friend says has the best ever recipe for Hamantashen dough: Purim Play

While mentioning children's books, I have to mention my all-time favorite series of Jewish picture books which are cute and educational: the "Sammy Spider" series. Here's the one about Purim: Sammy Spider's First Purim
I kept buying these as new ones came out for a few years after my kids were really past the intended audience. I guess I was thinking in terms of future grandkids I see from the Amazon listing that I've missed a few. I sure wish I had some younger Jewish nieces and nephews to buy these for, but my sister-in-law does not have children, and my sister's kids are Catholic and secular Christian.

My 17 year old daughter wants to chant a chapter of Esther for my minyan's erev Purim service this year. She wanted to do it last year but got too busy at school and ran out of time to prepare. The extra challenge is that at my minyan the Megillah is read from a scroll, so as for a Torah reading the reader has to know the vowels and trope, but she says that the vowels and trope are "easy" for such as narrative story. I hope she is not taking on too much because she is going to be really busy since she as "first cello" at her school she is playing in the orchestra for her school's production of "Hello, Dolly".

My family has usually done all our costumes in some sort of family theme, which is a fun tradition done by many families in my minyan. Last year we were all "bugs"'; the previous year we were different "Alice in Wonderland" characters. Our best year we were "other holidays": my husband was a piece of matzah; my daughter was a lulav and carried a giant "etrog"; my son was a dreidel; I was a tree (Tu Bishevat).

Here's a link for a graphic novel version of Megillat Esther

My daughter is making me anxious over her Megillah reading. The woman who had given her a quickie lesson last year was sick and then too busy, so we arranged a lesson over the phone. But my daughter insisted that she couldn't hear well over the phone and was mad at me for making her go through it. Then she has been too busy to prepare, so I asked her if she was sure she wanted to do it while there was still time to back out so the coordinator could easily line up a replacement leyner. This caused her to get mad at me because she said I was telling her she couldn't do it. But then later when I asked if she had done any practicing, she said she thought I had told her she couldn't and that I was going to tell the service coordinator that she was not doing it. So then I gave her the coordinator's email address and said that if she wanted to back out, it was her responsibility to notify the coordinator so she couldn't blame me for either making her read or not read. Sigh...sometimes she is quite mature, and other times she is definitely a teenager. And there is the inevitable mother-daughter dynamic.

As of this morning, she says she's going to do it. Only a week to go and most of 22 verses to learn. So I'll be biting my nails. Luckily, my minyan won't care if she stumbles through it. The gabbaim will prompt as much as needed. (And if she were to completely freeze up, although that's not likely to happen, there are several minyan members who could simply step in and take over.) I don't think she realizes how much I do want to be able to kvell about her reading Esther. She gave me a lot of naches by chanting a chapter of Eicha ("Lamentations") for Tisha B'Av.

What a great looking graphic novel!

Sending good luck to your daughter - she'll be fine :)

Can you recommend a website where I can order some nice, but not too expensive mishloach manot for some orthodox friends? I can't give them homemade food since my kitchen is not totally Kosher (ie. I don't mix meat and milk in cooking, but I don't use separate dishes), and I'd feel awkward about labeling all the bought food so that they know it's Kosher.

esf: Lots of packaged food is already labelled with a kosher hechsher, so it is really not too difficult to put together your own kosher mishloach manot even if you do not have a kosher home. It will be much less expensive to make your own packages than to buy any that you can buy (cheapest I could find with a quick Google search is $16 including shipping for a very small basket of candy---and probably only a few $ of candy with most of the expense for the shipping). Here is a list of kosher symbols: http://www.kosherquest.org/symbols.php
The most common ones are "OU" (U with a circle around it). O/K (K with circle around it), star-K (K with star around it), and Kof-K. Triangle-K is considered "not reliable" by some who are very stringent. A plain "K" is not an assurance of rabbinical supervision.

Some possibilities for package contents (these are what I use):
fresh fruit (no hechsher needed---I use clementine oranges or small apples), individual packages of chips, pretzels, crackers, or cookies (they don't have to be hamentaschen), small raisin boxes (Sunmaid is "Triangle-K" and I have some very frum friends, so I buy the Jewel generic brand which is OU), individually packaged tea bags, individually wrapped small candies (Hershey's kisses are OU-D and Ghiradelli and Lindt chocolate balls are kosher). One warning is that sometimes packages of individually packaged products have a hechsher on the big package, but not on each individual item. But in cases like Hershey's kisses, people who keep kosher know that they have a hechsher. In my note saying Happy Purim from my family, I give details about the hechshers of items that are not individually marked. For example, I buy packages of hamentashen and then re-bag to put three or four cookies in a zip-lock sandwich bag, so my note might say "hamentashen are OU-pareve and Hershey's kisses are OU-D".

I've also received mishloach manot containing individually wrapped granola bars, juice boxes, small bags of nuts, nuts in their shells like almonds and walnuts and brazil nuts, individual applesauce and fruit cups (Mott's applesauce is Triangle-K, but some strict Jews who don't eat other Triangle-K products eat the applesauce). The possibilities are endless.

Once you start checking packages for kosher symbols, you'll see that these days a very large number of national brands are kosher. I still remember how excited some Jews were when Oreos became kosher. Read the story here: The koshering of the Oreo cookie My sister-in-law taught me about hechshers about 30 years ago. It was really weird to discover that those symbols were all over and I had just never realized what they were.

The Reese's Cups are kosher. Here's a list of all the Hershey's brand candies that are certified kosher:
http://www.thehersheycompany.com/brands/special-nutrition.aspx#/Kosher

Note that unlike fresh fruit, some dried fruits require a hechsher (at least for Jews who strictly observe kashrut):
http://www.crcweb.org/kosher_articles/dried_fruits.php

The fact that individual items are not always printed with the hechsher is why my notes always give that extra info. But in the case of things like Hershey's candies, most Jews who keep kosher know which items are certifies kosher. And my friends, even those who are very stringent, know that I am very careful about food that I would give them (since when I have had them over I have sometimes checked with them about a particular hechsher because I know it matters to them), so they would probably not worry about anything that I would give them in misloach manot. So the hechsher info is probably not actually necessary, but I figure that it never hurts to give extra info.

Oh, I just remembered that I still have to pick up more of the colored cellophane for wrapping my packages. Or I'll just use Saran wrap if I don't have time or can't find the cellophane.

I wanted some pretty wax paper but I have no idea where to buy it locally so I gave up for this year. I'd love to find some for next year.

Thanks to both of you. Don't worry, I know that most foods are labelled etc, I actually keep fairly strict kosher in terms of what comes into my house, but not keeping dishes separate (and a few other things) means that my kitchen is not kosher. It was really just the hamantaschen that I was worried about (I can either buy them from a kosher bakery or in packets, but either way I'd need let my friends know that they're kosher, so Debbie's comment is exactly what I needed to know:

Quote:

In my note saying Happy Purim from my family, I give details about the hechshers of items that are not individually marked. For example, I buy packages of hamentashen and then re-bag to put three or four cookies in a zip-lock sandwich bag, so my note might say "hamentashen are OU-pareve and Hershey's kisses are OU-D".

Thanks! :)

When the Purim reading coordinator emailed to see if my daughter was prepared to chant her megillah reading, my daughter finally admitted that she isn't ready and can't reasonably learn all of the first chapter by Wed night, particularly given her school work and pit orchestra practice. Luckily, there is precedent for minyan members to split a reading between two people. There's a minyan member who worked for several years as a professional cantor for a Traditional congregation who probably read the "whole Megillah" (as they say) for them and can just fill in as needed. It's easy for him because as an Israeli, he is a native Hebrew speaker, plus he knows all different tropes really well. So my daughter will just read the first half of the chapter and then M will finish it.

What I'm really excited about is this year's Purim shpiel. It is a wacky combination of the Purim story with "A Christmas Carol" and has lots of really funny songs, some of which make fun of the minyan or Conservative and Orthodox Judaism. I've been recruited to play Scroogenberg's niece, Rabbi Fredina which is thankfully a non-singing role, although I'll do my part to sing for the chorus parts of some of the songs. The funniest song is definitely the one to the tune of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" making fun of my minyan's official six-word name due to a merger with our host shul which had already previously merged with part of another shul.

Some humorous Purim videos:
Hazon Purim video vault

I haven't watched these myself, but thought that others with more time on their hands might find them amusing.

Also a nice article from Hazon about Purim:
How Purim leads to Pesach

Do any of you give Mishloach Manot to your non-Jewish friends? We're putting together packages and my 4 year old son is keen to share with ALL his friends..