Students Celebrate Purim in Drag

The bottom floor of McIntosh was transformed into a dance hall complete with gypsies, Hawaiian dancers, cowboys and Indians, pirates, and a multitude of other costumed revellers gyrating to the sounds of a DJ Saturday night for Hillel's Purim celebration.

There were festivities for the Jewish holiday-which also included performances by the CU Marching Band, Hawaiian Dancers Club, and CU Bhangra-culminating in a drag contest.

While some students who attended the Purim entrainment could be overheard saying "it's a Jewish holiday, they're celebrating not being annihilated by something," there is more to the celebratory tradition than a Halloween-like party atmosphere.

"The rest of the year it [cross-dressing] is expressly forbidden. Tonight it is not only allowed but encouraged," Alex Port, CC '09 and coordinator for Religious Life Va'ad, said while clutching a gorilla mask in one hand and adjusting the tie of his Donkey Kong costume with the other.

The holiday commemorates the victory of the Jews in Persia over Haman from the Old Testament's Book of Esther. It is traditionally celebrated with hamentaschen, a triangular pastry filled with fruit or chocolate, costumes, and dancing.

"On this night doing drag isn't a LGBTQ thing, it's a Jewish thing," said Jason Bello, CC '08, of Gayava, Hillel's gay Jewish students group.

Different clubs sponsored booths, including a Dance Dance Revolution set-up where Bello-dressed as Jake Gyllenhaal's character from Brokeback Mountain-danced off against a man who had set aside his loafers and hiked up his skirt. Two human sized Styrofoam lungs-one pink and labeled healthy and one blackened-wandered by a booth where a man in a cocktail dress was taking photos of revelers sticking their heads through an old-style template showing a strong-man body with a cranial cut-out.

"This is just a Purim celebration," said Josh Rosner, CC '08 and president of Hillel, who was dressed as Wario down to the silver steering wheel and little yellow cart. He added that costumes were an extension of the Jews in Persia being saved and "everything in the world being turned upside down."