This year is a leap year on the Jewish calendar so there is a second month of Adar. The fun and silly holiday of Purim occurs this month and that means the levity has begun. Two funny videos for Purim are already attracting quite a bit of attention on YouTube.
The Yeshiva University a capella group The Maccabeats have followed their smash hit for Hanukkah with a Purim version of Pink’s “Raise Your Glass.” It might not go viral like “Candlelight” did (4.725 million views and counting), but it’s fun nevertheless.
Yael Buechler, a very creative senior student in the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, created a video parody of Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie starring the Seminary’s Chancellor Arnie Eisen (“Ernie”) and Professor Burt Visotzsky (“Bert”). Yael told me that students have joked about Burt as “Bert” and Arnie as “Ernie” for a number of years (probably for as long as Eisen has been chancellor). Since Buechler’s recent video creations have become very popular within the JTS community, she explained that the Chancellor and Rabbi Visotzky were eager to be in this latest hit. She wrote the script based on a Bert and Ernie scene and substituted the Purim pastry hamantaschen for pizza. As you can see, Eisen and Visotzky did some ad libbing as well. Even though I took a few courses with Prof. Visotzky, I was not aware of his dead-on Bert impersonation. It’s great to see these academics be such good sports for the sake of some Purim fun.