Every Single Purim Costume Is A Microaggression

By Amira Woker

Few Israeli parents give much thought to the societal or political implications of the mask or other attire their children don for this holiday, but that also means few parents realize how problematic that attire is, especially when it appropriates culture, glorifies or romanticizes violence, or otherwise causes offense to marginalized identity groups. This injustice must stop.

Purim costumes might appear innocuous, but to the countless people they hurt, such attire becomes yet another microaggression in the gantlet of a thousand tiny cuts they must negotiate each time they enter the pubic space, or even the internet. You think nothing of putting your child in traditional – some would even say stereotypical – Native American wear, but ignore the cultural appropriation that represents. You buy a ninja costume – some bastardized, inauthentic, commercialized costume made not even in Japan but in China – without considering the insult to the Japanese. Their culture is not your entertainment. Except Haredim. Go ahead and dress like them. Whatever.

Do not allow your child to dress like a soldier, certainly not an IDF soldier, because that glorifies violence and dispossession, not to mention exacerbates the offense to Palestinians; police officers are out, because many minorities have a fraught relationship with law enforcement; no cowboys, because of their role in dispossessing indigenous Americans and their objectification of livestock; and nothing ethnic, you insensitive Nazi.

A clown costume, by the way, is insensitive to those whose parents were murdered by clowns. It’s disturbing that this even needs to be said.

I’d like to revisit what I wrote above, about dressing like the ultra-orthodox, and clarify the point. Anyone else may dress like a Hasid, but the Haredim themselves must refrain even from garb that they might have considered their own culture, given the political and religious sensitivities of the time. I refer of course to costumes such as a High Priest, which also constitutes a microaggression against Palestinians: such a costume implies the existence of an ancient Jewish Temple, even a desire to see it rebuilt, and that goes against the Palestinian narrative of there never having been a Jewish house of worship on the Haram al-Sharif. It might not be a caae of cultural appropriation, but it does legitimize actual appropriation – respect their narrative! Did I invoke the Nazis already?

Above all, show empathy and respect. That way we will all have a pleasant, culturally sensitive Purim. Goddamn fascists.

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