Celebrating Purim with a Mexican Twist
Merrick PatchÂ
Where can you paint your own maracas, chow down on tacos and fajitas, parade around in costumes and hear music from a live five-member Mariachi band?
If you guessed a Cinco De Mayo celebration, try again.Â
Those events were actually all part of a Mexican Purim Fiesta put on Sunday by the Merrick-based Chabad Center for Jewish Life.
"Every year, it is a different country," Rabbi Shimon Kramer said of the event's theme. "It's just to make it exciting."
All of the fun took place inside the clubhouse of the Merrick Road Park Golf Course as families from across the region came to celebrate Purim, which commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from extermination.
The activities set up in the clubhouse were meant to teach children about the significance of the holiday, Chanie Kramer said.Â
While some children created a mishloach manot, a gift of food for friends, others searched for coins inside a tub of Mexican beans, as part of matanot la'evyonim, or the giving of charity to the poor.
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