Purim News from Across the Globe

Copenhagen’s most famous landmark, a 100-year-old amusement park in the middle of town, is about to be home to what locals are saying will be a pretty fantastic Purim party.

Chabad-Lubavitch of Arizona’s Smile on Seniors program is hosting its first-ever united Purim party this week, welcoming Jewish senior citizens from around the area at the Sierra Pointe retirement community in Scottsdale for a public reading of the Scroll of Esther and a celebratory meal.

Smolensk, Russia’s 7/40 restaurant hosted a kosher Purim party for 200 members of the local Jewish community.

Members of Thailand’s diverse Jewish community gathered for a grand Purim celebration in the heart of the Southeast Asia nation’s capital.

Jewish communities around the world celebrated the holiday of Purim earlier this week, with costumed celebrants gathering at Chabad-Lubavitch centers, street-corners and other locations to listen to readings of the Scroll of Esther, give each other gifts of food, distribute money to the poor and partake in a festive meal.

Yaakov Cohen, 21, has never read the Scroll of Esther, known in Hebrew as the megillah, before, much less in Nicaragua. But this Purim he’ll be there, scroll in hand, part of a group of 10 students volunteering in a remote village as a participant in the University of Maryland Hillel’s Alternative Spring Break program.

Jewish communities around the world are bringing in the Purim holiday this year with feasts, parties, gift giving and entertainment.

Jeremy Lite always looks forward to Purim, but this year, there’s even more excitement in store. He and his wife, Sharon, bought four raffle tickets that make them eligible to win 101 bottles of kosher wine and a cooler to store it all.

Looking for a little spiritual heft to accompany your Purim gift basket this year?

While they might not be ready to join the army just yet, Rabbi Mordechai Lichy’s class of fifth grade boys is still trying to be all that they can be.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world, many decked in costume, went to their local Jewish community centers, synagogues and Chabad-Lubavitch centers for a host of elaborate and historic Purim celebrations this week.

As news crews scouted the best locations to document the first major winter storm to strike New York’s Southern Tier region in three years, snowfall from blizzard-like blast led Binghamton University to cancel classes and forced its Chabad Center for Jewish Student Life to reschedule its annual Purim carnival.

In what is believed to be a first since a Roman siege almost 2,000 years ago laid waste to the mountaintop fortress of Masada, Jews gathered in the ancient ruins to hear a rabbinical student read from the biblical Scroll of Esther.

Thousands of needy Israeli children received costumes in advance of the holiday of Purim when the Yad B’Yad charity organization opened its warehouse for those whose families couldn’t afford to indulge the traditional custom.

It’s a time of year characterized by children in costumes, celebratory feasts, exchanges of gifts and the doling out of charity, a holiday that Jewish communities the world over look forward to as a day when the threat of annihilation disappeared.

Scores of volunteers flooded the offices and courtyards of Moscow’s Shaarei Tzedek social welfare center to pack boxes of pre-holiday shipments for elderly Jewish residents.

Leah’s Catering and the Stroum Jewish Community Center have launched a Purim-themed fundraising drive to benefit earthquake relief.

Jewish communities the world over celebrated the holiday of Purim with carnivals, live music and elaborate feasts, all centered around the traditional reading of the biblical Scroll of Esther.