Post Purim Post

It seems like everyone else is doing it, so here's the treppenwitz post-Purim wrap-up:

1.  Every Purim I go over to my friend Ben Chorin's house at midnight for his traditional 'Rebbishe Tish'. 

For those who weren't raised around Hassidim, 'Tish' means table... but in this context it means a semi-formal gathering where a hassidic rebbe hosts his adherents at a long table and offers them deep words of enlightenment and delicious morsels of enheavyment. 

Every Purim, Ben presides over his tish wearing a fur streimel and long black coat and holds forth to a packed room of inebriated friends on a wide range of religious and political topics... some of them even coherently.  One of the much-anticipated events at the tish are the numerous phone calls Ben makes (on speaker-phone) to highly placed members of government and industry (both here and in the US).  Nobody knows how he manages to get the home and cell phone numbers of world leaders and VIPs from the news... but he has yet to disappoint.  There may still be repercussions from some of this year's calls so I won't mention the names.  Yet. 

All in all attending the tish is a wonderful experience, but not without some small logistical problems that have tripped me up in years past.  For instance, since the tish only gets underway after midnight, I tend to get home in the wee hours of the morning, three sheets to the wind, and end up going to sleep in my clothes. 

This year I solved this problem by showing up at the tish in my pajamas and bathrobe.  Not only did this allow me the rare luxury of sleeping in proper attire for the first Purim in recent memory... but I was so delighted with the unaccustomed comfort that I opted to attend synagogue in the morning still wearing my pajamas.  I think this may become a treppenwitz Purim tradition.

2.  Purim day brought with it such beautiful spring weather that Zahava and I couldn't bear the idea of keeping the family inside for the traditional meal.  So after the kids had made their rounds delivering Mishloach Manot (gift baskets of food) to our friends, we piled everyone into the car and drove over to a National Park (Begin Park) not far from where we live and had a sumptuous picnic lunch in a sun-dappled forest.

While we were there I got a phone call from Jameel (of the Muqata) asking where I was.  It turned out he was standing outside our front door with a gift basket of - what else? - waffles! I explained that we were only 15 minutes away and even offered to give him directions to where we were... but he still had miles to go - and waffles to deliver - before he slept (in other words, he crapped out on us).

For the record, we shared Jameel's waffles on Shabbat morning... and even cold they were among the best damned waffles I've ever had in my life.  Joe settler was apparently also on Jameel's list, so since I didn't get a chance to photograph the waffles, here are a couple of pictures I lifted from his site:

Jameel delivering waffles:

The (now) famous waffle Mishloach Manot:

I hope everyone who celebrated the holiday had as much fun as we did.