March 13, 2025 Part 2
After our initial mixup of where we were supposed to go, we made it to the synagogue. We knew we were in the right place because there were security and police outside the door. They asked us several questions and then let us in the gate that opened to a courtyard. The synagogue building itself was set back from the street. The main facade of the synagogue faces an inner courtyard, since Portuguese law in the 19th century forbade non-Catholic religious temples from facing the street. This building finally had the permission to be built in the late 19th century and was completed in 1904. We came in at the same time as a young woman from the US, who I ended up sitting next to in the women’s section upstairs. The sanctuary was beautiful.
I had brought three wigs and a couple of costume pieces for us to wear when we came to the synagogue. It was the Jewish Festival of Purim, celebrating the survival of the Jewish people with the help of Queen Esther and her uncle Mordechai. The King had an evil advisor named Haman who orchestrated a genocidal plot against the Jews. In the synagogue, people dress up in costumes, the Megillah or scroll is read, and as the story is told, everyone makes noise to blot out the name of the villain Haman. This reading was particularly chaotic: Kids running around and yelling on the top floors, timed noise-making, and a lot of talking (particularly in the women’s section). We were one floor up from the men and were having trouble hearing the words to follow along above the din, especially as there were no microphones used, as is tradition.
The American woman who came in at the same time as us had also picked up the wrong copy of the Megillah (written in Portuguese and transliterated Hebrew). There was another lady sitting next to us from England who had the English and Hebrew version, so the three of us crowded together to share one book.
It was a powerful experience. All around me were people from all over the world speaking different languages. I heard Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, English and French. I shared the book with two other women who felt that it was important enough to come to the synagogue to participate in this joyous ritual in spite of being far away from their home communities.
Here is a short video clip:
Even though I couldn’t make out every world above the noise, the energy in the synagogue was positive and joyful, and I feel very lucky to have had the experience that I did.
The British woman (on the left) had made arrangement to join the local congregation for a breaking of the fast meal. Observant Jews fast for the day before Purim starts to remember that Queen Esther fasted for three days before she had to confront the King with the information that his trusted advisor had sentenced her to death in his genocidal plan. Esther had hidden her identity as a Jew before this and felt she needed help from G!d to have the strength to do what she needed to do.
We hadn’t had the chance to make any prior arrangements, so we didn’t want to intrude. Instead, we invited the young American woman (Arden) to join us for a celebratory Purim dinner.
Here are a couple of photos we took in the courtyard before heading out to dinner:
We went to a lovely restaurant we found very close by called Chao de Padras (translated to “The Stone Floor”). On the wall is a quote which translates to: “If there are stones blocking your way, keep them, someday you will use them to build a castle”.
Again, all of the food was delicious. We tried a variety of things, including something called rooster fish and Portuguese goat cheese with red wine cooked pears, We enjoyed getting to know our dinner companion, Arden, learning a small part of the story of her life. It reminded me of when I was younger, travelling the world, living fully in the moment. It also made me grateful for how far I have come, and for the fact I have hopefully still a long way to go, with amazing things still to come in my life going forward.
Great food, good company, all in a day full of amazing experiences. We enjoyed our walk home but didn’t get home until 11:35. It was then that I had made a mistake with the time difference; my midnight Clarington Diversity Advisory Committee Meeting online, actually started at 11pm Lisbon time, so I was already late. I had made the time calculations earlier, but I forgot about daylight savings in Canada (but not Portugal) the previous weekend. It was a middle-aged brain fart. I joined the meeting late but was still able to have a chance to weigh in on the response to some nazi swastika graffiti found spray-painted on a playground in Courtice, within our municipality of Clarington.
My meeting wasn’t finished until around 1am, so we had another late night, followed by a very early morning tomorrow. It seems we will be undoing our sleep-in from this morning and will be back on a sleep deficit.
