Why shouldn't I dress up as a clown? • Reflections from a trip to Switzerland

March 19, 2017   

כחלק מהפקות הבת מצווה - ועל הטירוף הזה ארחיב בפעם אחרת - החלטתי לקחת את בנותינו השוויצריות למסע שורשים קטן אצל הדודה בעיר באזל. היה זה בדיוק זמן קרנבל הפאסנאכט, שהיה לשם דבר במסורת המשפחתית, שנערך באופן מקרי, כך חשבתי, שבוע לפני פורים. אלא שיומיים של פסטיבל הולידו כמה תובנות שהבהירו לי שאולי לא מדובר במקריות גרידא.

A little about Fasnacht in Basel: It is a festival held every year 40 days before Easter, during which Christians abstain from eating meat (reminiscent of the Jewish three weeks...) - except that a minute before the difficult days, from their perspective, they unload their burdens in a crazy, particularly elaborate festival, held for three days. As much as a festival invites riots, it turns out that in Basel - a city and if in Switzerland there are clear rules that a foreigner would have difficulty understanding or absorbing.

The festival begins at 4 a.m. on Monday, also called Morgenstern, with a minute's silence and lights out.

Then, with a wave of a baton, thousands of drums and piccolos break the silence and begin an endless march through the streets of Basel. They invest so much in the celebration that some don't sleep for three days, except for measured breaks for drinks in cafes.

Groups, groups of musicians who practice for months in advance, march in the rhythm of a march through the city and play non-stop.

In addition, they have specific costumes for each clique, along with carts on a specific theme that is usually directly related to world politics.

This year the festival was called the Black Fasnacht - because of the pessimism that characterized the costumes and theme floats. Topics such as Brexit and of course Trump were central themes. Trump was portrayed as a threatening capitalist oligarch.

During the ceremony, each group distributes manifestos - so that if, God forbid, the audience does not understand the explicit drawings - they can understand their meaning from the explanations.

Confetti shower

The festival during the day is characterized by huge Goganmusic orchestras, adding various wind instruments, and huge carts that hand out many gifts to passersby, including surprises, dolls, and more - and lots of food: oranges, sweets, candy, and more. And of course the confetti ceremony - anyone who comes towards the truck to receive any prize risks being showered with confetti.

Rule number one: You are not allowed to pick up confetti from the floor, that is, recycle and throw it back. And to prevent this, the festival committee announced that mixed confetti should not be sold in stores, only bags of one color. Only the Swiss could think of that...

Tuesday is dedicated to children and takes on a refined, naive and relatively innocent appearance. Members of the various groups allow themselves to wander the streets in an unregulated manner and join other groups. And on the last day, Wednesday, they return to the initial, exemplary order and end at 4 a.m. with unique music and say goodbye.

Needless to say, two hours later the streets of Basel are free of any trace of confetti that spilled like wine on the streets - and life is returning to its unbelievably normal course.

And here the wheels of comparison began to turn.

First of all, I had to dig through the scroll, both upside down and down, and check where it says that people dress up. Of course, there is no mention of this in the scroll... My concerns grew, where do the lyrics of the song 'My little clown, can you dance with me?' come from? And in general, why is there a clown on Purim? What is the connection?

Where is the clown from?

The number of clowns seen at Fastnacht was dizzying, most of them less funny than we think, a kind of figure that unites contradictions within itself: great sadness and liberated joy.

What's going on here? I started to get suspicious.

 All sorts of characters that I dressed up as as a child – the Queen of the Night, a witch, a sorceress, Pierrot the sad clown, and other characters that I'm not sure where I heard about, passed in front of me at the Basel festival.

And here I was already panicking.

 Is it possible? And Purim rituals, after all, are the laws of the Gentiles?

Deep breath.

Well, I consoled myself, at least with us the Patzibel revolves around the reading of the Megillah and the content is very central.

 And here my eyes catch wonderful rattles, huge rattles that the celebrants in Basel carry with them. Along with manifestos that the celebrants write and distribute in the form of a long scroll. Spicy, witty 'Purim Spiel'-style platitudes spiced with lots of current affairs, which they call 'Schnitzelbank'.

 And to think that all of this is a celebration they do before the Easter fast. And with us? 'Esther's fast,' I muttered.

I am from the capital.

I reassured myself that the Jewish holiday has an altruistic nature - gifts to the poor and food deliveries.

But here, everyone at Fasnacht takes care to give out so many gifts to children and to every passerby, and food like oranges and vegetables and other delicacies that are thrown everywhere. And the feeling is that there is no hierarchy, no high and no low, everyone behind the masks releases, controlled joy with special music and becomes a larger unit, one big celebratory mass.

This is how I understood why Esther asked for one more day in the capital city of Shushan. I understood this intoxication from moments of royalty and control that symbolize and identify each city. There is a desire here to bring this national uniqueness to the Jewish people as well. I felt the tribal importance of saying that I am from the capital - that is, from Jerusalem.

I have no doubt that I will celebrate Purim in a completely different way from now on.

And the most important insight is that perhaps the shell is similar and we are all human – but the content, the content is the root of the matter. And you don't have to just refer to the lady's mantle. Rather, it is important to understand the deeper meaning of who the lady behind the mask really is.

Ultimately, the Jewish holiday maintains morality: both thanks to the reading of the scroll, which is read together and gives content to the celebration, and thanks to the family meal at the center of the holiday - which is the main thing - in contrast to the festivals of the Gentiles, where the family experiences the opposite during the celebrations and not us, and many divorces occur in their wake.

And why will I look for it this year? I'm not sure anymore... for a clown? Big doubt.

 • The writer is a doctoral student and contemporary Jewish art researcher, and director of the Art Shelter Gallery, a solo gallery in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.

Next event In the gallery: Songs and poets in preparation for Passover March 23 at 8:00 PM. Yehuda HaMaccabi 7 Mekor Baruch, Jerusalem.