Purim in Nicaragua

By Jessica Fisher, Columbia University / JTS
and Ilana Krakowski, Barnard College / JTS
Originally posted Sivan 5768

Purim in Nicaragua, By Jessica Fisher and Ilana Krakowski

Feliz Purim! From all the countries in all the world, we chose to celebrate Purim in Nicaragua this year. We were part of a group of 12 Columbia/Barnard/JTS students, spending our spring break on a Hillel/American Jewish World Service trip to Matagalpa, Nicaragua. AJWS works with grassroots organizations throughout the developing world to ameliorate poverty, hunger, and disease. At the same time, AJWS volunteers explore social justice within the framework of Jewish tradition and put those values into practice.

Through AJWS, we were set up with a non-governmental organization, Fundación Denis Ernesto Gonzáles (FDEG), whose main objectives are to work with the peasant population in the province of Matagalpa through development and education on sustainable agriculture. For our week in Nicaragua, we worked with the small community of El Horno to start building an accessible agricultural center. This work involved physical labor alongside Nicaraguan farmers, engaging in a crossbreed of pantomime and dialogue. To add to the personal interactions, we worked on farms in the afternoons, picking gandul beans and digging irrigation ditches. All of our meals were prepared by a local woman, Carmen, and eaten at her home. We also spent a day walking around a small town, San Ramon, talking to the people we met along the way.

It was a happy coincidence that the week of our spring break coincided with Purim. Before our departure, we planned for someone to bring a megillah, plastic masks, and graggers. As the people of the community celebrated Semana Santa, Holy Week, in preparation for Easter, we were able to have conversations with them comparing our holidays.

Although our version of Purim might not have been recognizable as the type of celebration you would find in your synagogue, there was certainly something unique and special about it. In El Horno, we slept on the floor of the community's elementary school (they were on vacation for Semana Santa). For our megillah reading, we pulled out the desks into the courtyard and read by the light of the one functioning fluorescent lamp, in the middle of a community where the roads were lit by the moon.

As we sat wearing our masks and listening to the words that have been repeated for hundreds of years at the same time every year, it felt as if we had created our own community in the heart of Nicaragua. In fact, there was another American group, from the University of Wisconsin's Hillel, staying down the road, and because they had not brought their own megillah we were able to invite them into our community to share in our experience. It dawned on us that we might have been witnessing the only megillah reading in the entire country.

Inasmuch as the trip was about exposing us to a new culture and the important and serious issues faced by the El Horno community, it was also very much about us exploring our Judaism in a new way. Every member of our group came into the trip with a different Jewish identity and part of our experience was learning to navigate the challenges and rewards of such a group. In the end, we were able to come up with a Purim that all were able to relate to and celebrate in.

During this spring break, we reaffirmed that an essential part of being Jewish is being a citizen of the world and that one does not have to be sacrificed for the other.

[Posted 7/2/08]