Purim!

It’s that time of year again so it’s time to tell the Magilla! Get a bottle of your favorite something or other and let’s hoot and holler at the story of the stuff that happened during the time of Xerxes.

But first, you might want to bake some Hamantaschen cookies. I thought “the Hamantaschen cookies look pretty good in the picture… I know! I should look up some recipes!” and there are a lot of recipes out there that require a double boiler or that sort of thing and, I mean, that’s just crazy talk. Nobody uses a double boiler to make cookies. So I found one that looks easy. (It’s even got the word “traditional” in it.)

This is also the time of year to feed the needy. So take a friend out to lunch or, if charity is more your thing, here’s the fine list of charities that we used last year:

If the Purim thing is having you say “maybe I’ll give to a Jewish charity”, there is Mazon. If you think, okay, it doesn’t need to be a Jewish charity, some good ones are Action Against Hunger, The Hunger Project, or, if you want to donate to something closer to home, Meals on Wheels. If humans aren’t your strong suit, Pets of the Homeless specializes in providing veterinary care to the pets of the homeless. If you’re more interested in food for the mind? Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library gets books into the hands of children on a monthy basis from birth until they’re ready to go off to school at age five.

And, seriously, I know you think that you shouldn’t give unless you can give something big like $50 or $100. You know what? It’s okay to give $5 if that’s all you feel you can safely afford to shell out this Purim. There are a lot of problems in the world where people are paralyzed by feeling like they can’t do enough… well, you know what? We probably can’t ever do enough. But that shouldn’t keep us from doing anything.

Do a little and if we get enough little things done, that’s the same as doing a big thing. Be a part of that.

So… what’s the charity that you tend to throw $5 toward when you find yourself with an extra $5?

(Picture is “purim hamentashen“, cookies shaped like Haman’s (BOO!) hat. Picture taken by Nate Steiner who put it in the public domain.)