March 8, 2010 | 7:14 pm

Purim reflection: Farmer’s market and the Temple Emanuel carnival

Posted by Ryan Torok

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I was lost in a maze of crepe stands, nut vendors, smoothie bars and actual bars at the farmer’s market at the Grove. I’d been stood up by a girl, a 40-year old voiceover actress actually, who I was supposed to meet to see a band of klezmer, punk gypsies that were supposed to be playing in the middle of the Sunday morning craziness but were nowhere to be found (I found out later that I wasn’t stood up at all but had gone to the wrong farmer’s market—oops), but I met these people, the Kaufmans, who were munching on crepes. They let me put my coffee down on their table while I fished around for a pen and pad in my Jansport backpack, and then the Mrs. of the marital equation, Sherry Kaufman, a makeup artist, educated yours truly about the origins of the farmer’s market I’d mistakenly gone to. Life was pretty good.

I asked Mrs. Kaufman if she reads the Jewish Journal.

“It’s Purim today. Did you know that?” I asked.

Part deux: Not For Those Who Don’t Know Matt

I left the market of the farmers, drove to my dad’s apartment and picked up my sister’s dog…

...and went to the Purim carnival at Temple Emanuel, where I met up with my friend Matt and his girlfriend near the dunk tank. All around us, kid-sized Spidermans, clowns, baseball players and hippies ran around the closed off street, which was off of Burton Way, and sprayed each other with silly string—it was late in the day, the ride were being shut down—the moon bounce had already been deflated to a giant blob—and so the kids had to find a way to amuse themselves. Silly string is as good as anything. I asked Matt, who was never the strongest Jewish studies student in high school, to explain the Purim story. He actually did a pretty decent job. The video is below and it’s over three-minutes long, which doesn’t seem bad to me, but Matt’s my friend. For those who don’t know Matt, the video could probably be shorter.