purim programming guide

PURIM PROGRAMMING GUIDE
Purim can be the busiest time of year for youth directors
and quite overwhelming. Below are suggestions for
substantive and fun Purim programs. Don’t limit yourself
to this guide; rather take these ideas as a starting point
and tailor/expand them creatively to fit your community.
Compiled and presented by:
Shira M. Berkovits, PhD,
WINGS Youth Consultant,
Department of Synagogue Services
Disclaimer: Contact information for vendors is New York specific
but most communitys should have similar vendors.
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SLEEPOVER /PAJAMA PARTY
The months between Chanukah and Purim tend to have the least amount of programming. This
is the perfect time to get to know the members of your youth department in a more intimate setting. Consider inviting two grades (e.g., 3rd-4th grade girls) over to your house for a pre-Purim
sleep over with their leaders. Bake hamentashen together and prepare a special Purim skit/spiel
which can be performed for the other youth groups on the Shabbat preceding Purim. Gather old
clothes and new face paint and have a Purim fashion show.
MITZVAH CLOWNING
In the weeks leading up to Purim, invite members of your community to receive official clown
training. Once trained the mitzvah clowns can visit children’s hospitals, nursing homes, and
schools for children with special needs. This is a long-term program that is especially appropriate to launch on Purim day.
Several agencies offer medical or mitzvah clown training and will come to your community for a
day-long training session. The training and clown kits can be costly, so try to find several families that are passionate about bikkur cholim to underwrite or subsidize the cost. The training
will provide participants with the clown skills and confidence necessary to walk into an unfamiliar environment and strike up a funny conversation with a stranger. This program can be
time intensive, as each of the monthly trips requires coordination (e.g., travel) and supervision.
However, families that participate in the training (or parents of children that do) are often eager
to oversee the program, thereby greatly minimizing the youth director’s time commitment.
This program is quite versatile and can be used to target the otherwise elusive teenage crowd, as
a pre-bar/bat mitzvah activity for parents and children, or it can be open to all ages. Participants
often report feeling transformed and empowered after beginning this program, and participating
organizations rave about the kindness and cheer the mitzvah clowns spread.
PURIM FAMILY MINYAN
Have a Purim Family Minyan on Sunday morning 1-2 weeks before Purim. Invite families to
join you for an interactive musical tefillah followed by breakfast and a Purim activity, such as:
• Order cheap masks from Oriental Trading and provide glue, glitter, feathers, pom-poms and
stickers for decorating. Avoid paint if you want to minimize the mess.
• Collaborate with your neighborhood Jewish Community Council (or the like) to make mishloach manot baskets for the elderly or homebound. Have each family fill and decorate one basket at your program and deliver it on Purim day.
• Create rain-sticks to use as groggers. Collect the cardboard from inside paper towel or toilet
paper rolls. Cover one end with masking tape and fill with beans or pebbles; then cover the
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other end. Have the adults stick pins into the cardboard. Decorate the stick with tissue paper
and glue. Listen to the “rain” as you turn the rain stick from side to side.
• Bake hamentashen. To minimize complications, prepare the dough in advance or purchase
it from your local bakery. Provide the children with circle cookie cutters and a variety of jelly
flavors. Advise them to insert minimal filling so as to maintain the triangle shape. Place the
hamentashen on baking paper and write the children’s name in front of their hamentashen prior
to baking. The hamentashen will take some time to cool, so come prepared with another activity or take-home tins.
• Have a Purim puppet show.
Professional shows tend to be pricey, so make sure to ad-vertise well and charge a small cover
fee. Alternatively consider recruiting talented individuals/teens from within the community and
put together your own puppet show. www.chaikids.com sells wonderful Purim muppet
puppets. The puppets are not cheap, but are of wonderful quality and some come with change
of outfits so they can be reused at various points in the year (e.g., parsha puppet shows).
PURIM YOUTH GROUPS
This year Purim begins on Wednesday night. Help build the excitement from the Shabbat preceding Purim, by making youth groups Purim-themed. Here are some ideas:
• Decorate: Cover the youth wing from floor to ceiling with bright, kid-friendly, Purim decorations. The instant families open the door they should be transported into a Purim wonderland.
Better yet, create a mini Shushan, with group leaders dressed as characters from the Purim story.
• Have “royal court advisors” greet the children at the door to escort them through the “palace”
to their “party” room.
• Dress-up: Collect old costumes, clothes, and accessories, and place them in a giant box. Bring
in a full-length mirror and give each group 20 minutes of Purim dress-up playtime. This activity
is perfect for all ages - just make sure to collect a variety of costume sizes.
• Story Time: Have each group read a Purim story (e.g., Sammy the Spider, Olameinu, Kids
Speak, It’s Purim Time!). Alternatively, gather all the groups together and have the leaders put
on a Purim play. This takes minimal preparation, so long as you provide the leaders with copies
of the script. Children love seeing their group leaders decked out in costume and acting silly.
This is especially fun if the leaders incorporate participation from the children in the audience.
• Important Note: The Purim story can be quite graphic. Make sure that your telling of it is age
appropriate. Avoid words like “kill” and “hang” and consider more benign substitutions like
“hurt”, “not nice”, and “do bad things”.
• Purim Quiz Show: After the groups have learned about Purim with their group leaders, split
the youth groups into two teams (with a mixture of older and younger groups on each team).
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In your best announcer’s voice, and wearing a shiny hat and vest, ask Purim trivia questions.
Alternatively, create a smaller version of the quiz show for each youth group, without teams.
Ask questions, and whenever a child gets it right, give them a hamentash. Arrange the difficulty
of questions so that every child can get at least 1 or 2.
• Purim Activity: Each group should engage in an age-appropriate Purim activity. For example,
distribute one picture of the Purim story to each child and then ask them to line up in
chrono-logical order. For younger children, put all the pictures on the floor and work as a
group.
COSTUMES
Offer an extra week’s pay to the group leader with the best costume at the _______ (fill in the
blank: parade, carnival, megillah reading, Shabbat youth group preceding Purim). The costume
contest will generate excitement amongst the leaders and increase the festivity of your event,
while costing you little. Announce the winner at the end of the event.
Big Disney-style characters can be exciting additions to any Purim event. Recruit teen leaders
to wear the costumes and mingle with the children at megillah reading, the parade, and
carnival. Alternatively, ask the clergy in your synagogue to consider donning the costume.
Elmo, Winnie the Poo, or Nemo are always big hits and the younger children can’t get over
that this big huggable character is actually their Rabbi, while the older children love guessing
which Rabbi is in each costume. The “good” characters tend to sell out fast around Purim time,
so it is a good idea to call as early as possible. Note: A small percentage of children are
frightened by big costumes, so warn parents of their presence in advance.
KID FRIENDLY MEGILLAH READING
Megillah reading can be somewhat difficult to navigate, as the youth director must balance the
need for silence with the need to engage the children. Speak to your rabbinic staff to determine
the tone they would like to set for megillah. In some synagogues, it is of utmost importance that
the main reading be silent and serious; if yours is such a synagogue, consider having a separate
children’s reading. If your synagogue is more relaxed, brainstorm with the clergy for ways to appeal to the children. Here are some suggestions for bringing the megillah to life:
• Project the words of the megillah on a big screen to assist children and adults with poor hearing as they follow along. The JDCC provides a megillah PowerPoint for this purpose. For
more information on Power Point Megillah, contact the OU at 212.613.8322.
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• Distribute copies of children’s megillot with big bright pictures and English translation
• Have a clown distribute groggers to the children before megillah reading begins.
• Use a huge stoplight. When Haman’s name is read, move the light to green to indicate that it
is time to sound the groggers. Move the light to yellow and then red when it is time for silence.
(Young Israel of Staten Island)
• Have several group leaders create a puppet show on the bima to accompany the megillah
reading. The children can sit on the floor in front of the bima and watch the puppets interact
according to the “narration” (leining). As the puppets cannot “talk” during megillah, this show
requires advance practice to match the leining and should only be done for the more interactive
perakim.
• Find a Baal Koreh extraordinaire who leins megillah with different voices for each character, most notably, a high pitched one for Zeresh.
PURIM SPIEL/ESTHER THE MUSICAL
Purim is a wonderful opportunity for intergenerational programming. Ask members of your
community to put together a Purim spiel to perform after Megillah reading on Purim night. The
spiel should tastefully poke fun at your community and shul and be reviewed by the rabbinic
staff to prevent any inappropriate jokes. You might also ask a specific youth group to spend
some time on Shabbat morning preparing a grammen. As an alternative to the traditional spiel,
consider an intergenerational musical performance of the Purim story. Invite the community to
contribute their own particular talents in drama, choir, scenery, costumes, music etc.
CLUB PURIM
Club Purim is a fun, cool, safe, supervised, alcohol-free place for teens to hang out on Purim
night. The idea is to take over a local restaurant or your synagogue’s teen lounge and transform
it into a Purim club. The transformation is all in the details: a disco ball, fog machine, bubble
machine, strobe lights, colored/black light bulbs etc. Set up an alcohol-free bar with glow in
the dark shot-glasses and several bar tenders. Give out lots of glow in the dark jewelry and hair
spray which will look great under the strobe lights. Food should be kid-friendly (e.g., fire poppers, sushi, chicken nuggets, franks and blanks, spicy fries). Entertainment should be Purim
related. You can organize an elaborate game show with Purim questions and topics, perform
mini Purim spiels, improv various Purim scenes, or set up a courtroom and debate the many
controversial topics raised in the Purim story. Alternatively, Club Purim can be a night for Battle
of the Bands, with the requirement being that the bands must play original and innovative
Purim songs. You can also rent/bring karaoke, foosball, air hockey, pop-a-shot basketball and
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ping pong for chill-out time once your official Purim activity has finished. If advertised correctly (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, high schools) this can be the place-to-be on Purim night, and
teens from neighboring communities will travel to be a part of it. This program should aim to
a) provide a fun Purim activity appropriate for preteens or teens b) keep kids off the street on
a night where alcohol is easily accessible, and c) provide a safe space for teenagers to hang out
with each other and the synagogue’s rabbinic and programmatic staff, fostering a sense of community and belonging.



PURIM PARADE
On Purim day (or the Sunday preceding Purim) at around 11am or shortly after Megillah, host
a neighborhood-wide Purim parade. Invite all the community children to come in costume for
a parade around the block of the shul. The best part about a Purim parade is the attention it
draws. Done correctly the parade can attract 200-500 people, with some hanging their heads
out of their windows to catch the excitement, and others running outside to join up. In particular the Purim parade is a wonderful outreach opportunity/entry point for unaffiliated Jews to
encounter Purim.
PLANNING
Police: A parade requires the assistance of the local police, so make sure to contact them in
advance. The police should arrange for street closures and provide escorts (ie, a squad car in
the front and back of the parade and police to walk alongside). The Purim Parade is an annual
event at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale and the police are very helpful. The police in your
town might be surprised at first, but excited to help out after you explain the details. Stress that
the whole parade should last about an hour and leave minimal mess.
Advertise: Much of the parade’s success depends on turn-out and a festive atmosphere. Make
sure to advertise this event really well. Invite the local elementary and preschools to lead/join
the parade. Ask the schools to distribute fliers to each child, post fliers in local stores, on community list-serves and in building lobbies. Make sure to send out a (free) press release to the
local and Jewish papers.
IDEAS
• Invite the marching band of a local public high school to lead the parade playing Purim songs
• Create your own band of community members who play instruments & have them lead/join.
• Alternatively, rent an ice cream truck and have it slowly lead the parade. Provide the truck
driver with a CD of Purim songs to play out of the loudspeaker. Ride on top of the ice cream
truck with the rabbis and wave to the crowd. At the end of the parade have the driver hand out
a free ice cream to each child. Negotiate the price of the ice cream in advance (usually around
$0.50 a piece).
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• Hire stilt walkers, jugglers, balloon artists and other entertainers to join the parade and then
your carnival.
• Invite an artistic member of your community (or group leader) to paint faces before and after
the parade. This part is usually a huge success. Make sure to purchase supplies in advance.
• Have the Rabbis join the parade in rented costumes (see above). Costumes add a lot to the
parade, and children will flock to the Rabbis for a chance to get a hug or take a picture.
• Go directly from the parade to the Costume Fashion Show or Purim Carnival (see below).
COSTUME FASHION SHOW
Following the parade, have a costume fashion show where the children get to show off their
costumes. Arrange to have a stage or elevated platform (e.g. top of steps) as well as a mega/microphone. As each child approaches the stage announce his/her name and costume (e.g., “Up
next is David Cohen dressed as the Kohen Gadol”). As the children exit the stage to applause,
have the Rabbi hand them a small Purim trinket (e.g., a grogger or hamentashen).
CARNIVAL
A Purim carnival is often considered a staple of Purim programming and a wonderful fundraising opportunity. Do your best to relate the fun and games to Purim, so that the carnival has
some substantive meaning. Below are booth and entertainment ideas:
PURIM BOOTHS
• Purim Mystery Box. Turn several boxes upside down with Purim related items underneath
(vary the tactile sensation as much as possible). Have kids guess what each item is.
• Make hamentashen. Have dough prepared in advance. Children should shape and fill their
hamentashen and place them in a little tin pan to be baked at home (baking them at shul is just
too complicated for such a busy event).
• Decorate masks (see Purim Family Minyan above).
• The sign for the month of Adar is fish. Guess how many jelly fish are in the container. Make
sure to figure out a prize for the winner in advance, since “You get to take home all the jelly
fish” is not a healthy choice, and will likely only upset the parents.
• Pin the tail on the Haman.
• Ping pong ball spoon racing. Have the children hold a spoon with a ping pong ball on it, in
their mouth or hand, and walk to the finish line wearing big funny clown shoes.
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• Sand Art. Pour the sand artfully into bottles (www.sandartsupplies.com, extra can be used at
other events) or purchase Purim specific sand art (www.jewishcrafts.com).
• Give out hamentashen or a grogger to every person that wears a costume.
JUST FOR FUN BOOTHS
• Find the pennies in the flour (make sure to count the pennies first and record the number).
• Fluff and Chips: Have the kids guess how many chocolate chips are on a spoon with fluff.
• Shoot out the candles with water guns.
• Shave the Balloon: Use shaving cream, plastic knives, and thin balloons.
• Have the children toss a ping pong ball into cups with water in them. Use food coloring to dye
the water different colors. The colors represent different levels of difficulty, depending on their
distance.
• Face Painting. Talented leaders or shul members can run this booth. Consider investing in a
face painting book and supplies.
• Spin Art. Like a cotton candy machine, a spin art machine is expensive, but can be used often
and might be a worthwhile investment.
• Balloon animal. There are some basic shapes. Find someone who can make balloon animals
and ask him/her to train your leaders, who can roam the room and distribute balloons.
• Assign a leader as cameraman. You want to make sure to photograph all your big events and
share the photos in a youth department newsletter.
• If you can borrow a foosball table, this makes a great “booth” for older attendees.
• Most likely someone in your neighborhood has a dance-dance or Wi/Fit. See if they will lend
it to you for the carnival.
• If you are short on leaders, ask the local pizza shop to sell the pizza themselves and give you a
profit, rather than having to assign leaders to the hectic food booth.
• Make sure that there is background music.
• Consider hiring a clown for a few hours. A clown might cost as much as one blow-up ride,
but a good one can drastically enhance the festivity of an event.
Happy Purim!
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