Purim Skits & Videos

Tradition/Holiday

My informant goes to a Jewish school with 40% Persian Jews, so holidays celebrating Persian Jews are commonplace. One, called Puram, involves making skits.

My informant explained, “purim Celebrates the Persian Jews, and traditional has something to do with writing plays or parodies to commemorate the Jews of Persia. I’m not exactly sure how that started, but  nowadays we commemorate the day by doing something along those lines. Every year, in school, groups of students would make videos that made fun of the teachers. The teachers would do the same, theirs taking form of a fake news report (mocking the weekly student news videos).

My informant said, “Everybody loved this day, because it was fun to tell the teachers what we didn’t like about them in a not so mean way. The videos were usually very funny, and everybody got excited to see them since the whole school gathered to watch them together.

These videos are way for students to air their grievances, empowering an otherwise disempowered group. Also, this event brings together the community and reinforces their identities as students or faculty. Most importantly, this is a way for students to criticize the school, but have a good time while doing it.