KosherKidz: Purim Costumes

I love Purim! The numerous joyous ways to celebrate another Jewish victory, coupled with the kid-friendly components make this one of my favorite chagim. But truth be told, my favorite part has nothing to do with the mitzvot of the day.

The mitzvot are:
Matanot l'evyonim = Charity to the poor
Mishloach manot = food baskets to friends
Megillah = hearing the Book of Esther read
Seudah = a festive meal

That is all. The mitzvot of the day do not include getting completely inebriated, apposed to popular belief. They also do not include COSTUMES! :(

A few weeks ago my husband looked up from the book he was learning and said, "I don't want you to cry, but..." And proceeded to read a teshuva on how Moroccans do not wear costumes for Purim and look down on the practice. To which I calmly explained that I agreed to be Sephardi, but never Moroccan.

And so I asked the girls what they thought we should dress up as. I am a big believer in a group costume. The year my husband and I were engaged I sewed us costumes to be The Incredibles. When Cohava was a baby we were sun, moon, and star (Cohav means star). And so on. Last year Cohava and Gabi both wanted to be butterflies so we went as The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

But this year, I said, "Ok, girls, IYH, this will be the last year we will be a family of five. What should the five of us be?"
"I know five!" Cohava cheered. "Five are the books of the Torah!"
And so our costume idea was found. Gabi wanted to be Beresheet and Cohava Shemot (by default I took Vayikra, Ben Bamidbar, and Ruti Devarim). The girls sat down with their Parasha books to decide which images they wanted to include.

Once they had made a list, I went to work on Google, trying to find images to match their requests. It proved more challenging than I anticipated.

At K-mart I bought white T-shirts for the family and at Office Works I bought iron-on transfers.
For various reasons the iron-on transfers were disastrous. Plan B, involved printing the images on large Avery labels.

This was much more successful.

The stickers will go all over the white shirt of the appropriate sefer. From paper mache clay I made everyone a 'yad' necklace and painted them silver.

And a keter Torah for everyone's head. The name of their sefer will be on the keter.

I won't let anyone put on the costumes until Purim because I don't want them getting messed up!

So everyone wore something else for today's "Taste of Purim" at school.