What Am I Doing In Detroit: Purim in Jerusalem

I found out about a week before Purim that in Jerusalem Purim is completely different than in the rest of the world. While everyone else celebrates on the 14th of Adar, here they celebrate on Shushan Purim, the 15th. Maybe I knew that before, but I completely forgot about it. It's especially odd, as cities just a few minutes away celebrate at the normal time.

One of the things I like about being here, 7 hours (6 for the next two weeks or so) hours ahead of Detroit, is that we're always...ahead. So, it was quite strange to hear from my family and to see the pictures of everyone dressed up in their costumes on Thursday, which was more or less a normal day here. And when we celebrated on Friday, everyone in the states had already been sober for hours (maybe).

Another interesting thing here is that the celebrations start well before Purim. The whole last week there were people walking around Jerusalem in costume (come to think of it, they might have just been weirdos).

On Thursday night after Megilla (I'll admit I really missed the Detroit Megilla reading, which is so much nicer than the one I went to), I managed to overcome my old man inertia and I went out to see what was going on around town. I planned to take the bus & train to Machane Yehudah, walk around there, continue until Ben Yehudah St. and then walk to Geulah. Turns out the buses and especially the trains, can't mover very well on Purim. It took about 45 minutes for what is normally a 10 minute ride. Everyone was dressed up and mostly drunk, or acting like it.

One nice thing (I'm choosing to take it as a good thing anyway) is that everyone here celebrates, even if (maybe especially if) they don't have any other connection to Judaism. It certainly makes for more interesting costumes. Machane Yehudah and Ben Yehudah St. were mob scenes, similar to Time Square on New Years Eve, except more lively and entertaining.

On Friday we had a brunch seudah so as not to have it interfere with Shabbos. Somehow I ended up hosting the Seudah for 5 seminary girls (two of them were my sisters), my nephew and my in-laws. We had bagels, lox, fake cream cheese and eggs with salami. There might have been more food, I don't recall. After the meal, Matis and I went around town with the girls and made some friends on the train, which was probably the most fun of the day. We walked to Geulah and met my totally sober (in case the grandparents are reading) cousin, but nothing interesting was happening because it was so close to Shabbos. The buses and trains stopped operating and we got stuck. We walked for about a half hour before finally finding a taxi that would take us the rest of the way (most of them refused to take us, b/c it wasn't a high enough fare).

We made it home less than an hour before Shabbos and fortunately we were able to put the seminary girls to work getting everything ready and that's the end of the story. Most of my pictures didn't come out, but here are a few that did. I threw in a few videos for good measure, but they may cause motion sickness, watch at your own risk.