Purim, Semana Santa, freshmen & Judas

The Sunday before Purim, the vendadores appeared in our plazuela, selling what, at first glance, looked to be bouquets of fresh greens, tied with a string. We wondered if they were some special local produce, freshly come into season, and why they were suddenly being sold in the neighborhood. When we approached one of the sellers to inquire, we realized that they were small branches of palm (and yes, if you can imagine a small, green lulav, that is exactly what it brought to mind). Of course! It was Palm Sunday, and the branches were being sold for la misa (Mass) later that day.

So, the next day, it was natural that we thought of Semana Santa (Holy Week) when we saw a group of young men, dressed in torn clothing with dirt and ashes on their faces, begging for spare change on a street corner in El Plan (the downtown trafficky urban center of Valparaíso, which is completely different from the tranquilo hill where we live). These were not your typical beggars; these were young healthy men, the age of college students, who looked like they were engaged in some form of street theater. When one of them approached us to ask for spare change, we asked him if what they were doing was something religious, connected to Semana Santa. Oh no, no, this was completely different. These were, as they appeared, college students. (Most of the colleges in the city had begun classes the previous week or two for the fall semester.) The quick explanation that we received was that this begging was something all the incoming freshmen had to do – some sort of initiation rite. Oh, it’s like hazing, we thought.

We then started seeing students everywhere, dressed in torn clothing, covered with colorful paint, on their clothes, faces and hair, young men and women, all asking for change. We even encountered on Wednesday a large gathering of students in Parque Italia, in the process of getting smeared with paint and confetti, amidst cheers and laughter.

We asked these young women if we could take their picture, telling them we had a son in college back in the states. We later got more of an explanation from Paz Schwencke, a new Chilean friend who works at a local hostel, who has been doing a language exchange with us – an hour of Spanish practice for one of us in exchange for an hour of English practice for Paz. Paz explained that this was something all the incoming students did, each day from different facultades (i.e. art students, engineering students, or what have you). The students are sent out to beg money on the streets, which is then used to buy beer for the student parties. Not so very different from freshman hazing.

Purim happened to fall in the middle of this same week – and on Thursday night we went to the sinagoga to share in the celebration, bearing with us Hamantaschen that we had made that morning (thanks to the rapid response of both Rick Nathan and Sandy Cohen to our frantic emails the day before seeking Hamantaschen recipes.) Here are some pictures from Purim –

Jonathan was invited to chant some passages from the Megilah and Linda was asked to talk a little about the Megilah she had scribed for Temple Sinai.

Following the service, Rabino Roberto Feldmann led everyone in singing and dancing around the refreshments table.

Semana Santa concludes, of course, with Easter Sunday. During the week, up in the hills, we had seen children carrying what looked like straw men, which we were told were figures of Judas. On Easter Sunday, we saw two of these Judases set up in the plazuela near our home and we were asked to donate coins for the burning of Judas. (In fact two groups of eager young boys competed for our coins, each arguing the merits of their particular Judas.) We learned that the burning of Judas would take place that evening at 8:30, not in the plazuela, but in the square in front of the church.

By 8:30, a sizeable crowd had gathered. Excited children darted about underfoot, elders shouted “Cuidado!” (Careful!”), as first one, then the next Judas was tied onto a wire strung from one side of the street to the other, doused with lighter fluid, set on fire, and hoisted into the air. We then discovered the purpose of the coins “for the burning of Judas”.

Apparently, they had been put inside the Judases, like candies inside a piñata. As the Judas burned and his limbs disintegrated, the coins inside came tumbling out onto the street and eager children scrambled to retrieve them. “I’ve got enough money for chocolate!” Linda heard one young girl shout to a friend.

It was a friendly, multi-generational crowd, not so very different from the crowd that might be gathered in a synagogue to boo Haman and celebrate his demise at the end of the book of Esther. There is something universal in this desire to celebrate the triumph of good over evil – and to cheer the downfall of the one identified as wicked. Yet, we felt rather squeamish watching Judas burn. Perhaps it was our awareness that in other places, at other times, not so very long ago, the burning Judases would not have been cloth or paper figures, but real Jews. Or perhaps it was because, in general, burning human figures is something we associate with political or religious extremism, whether it is in the Middle East, Nazi Germany or the Ku Klux Klan in our own country. We concluded that we prefer the Jewish High Holy Day rituals of taking responsibility for our own sins and failings over those rituals (including Jewish ones) that identify some other as the source of evil.