A sweaty throng of Purim junkies, tipsy Chabadniks, protective mothers and non-Jews wanting to get a piece of the action poured into the first Purimpallooza on Monday night.
In San Francisco, 500 shared the Great American Music Hall’s wooden dance floor and threatened to bust it, stomping madly to pounding drums and Jewish rock.
In a ghostlike, two-toned painted face with one side of a shaggy beard shaved off, David Miller twirled his young son to the music.
“Rock concerts don’t have this level of holiness to them,” said Miller, a Berkeley resident. In the costume contest, Miller’s spooky, sweat-smeared face lost out to a woman cloaked in a frilly fairy outfit.
“The main thing about Purim is we’re not supposed to be uptight. Thank God we are here, we survive and hopefully we thrive,” Miller shouted.
Uptight was out. What was right on? A woman who dubbed herself a “metalhead mama,” a Chabad-affiliated teen in a peacock suit, a rowdy frat boy with a Jewish star painted on his head and a young man in a pimp getup wearing a yarmulke.
“Gimme a P!” called clown-suited Wavy Gravy, in a mock flashback to his Woodstock rallying cry. “Gimme an URIM! What’s that spell?”
A jolly Rabbi Yosef Langer, head of Chabad House of S. F., which hosted the party, took swills from a bottle of Corona and pranced with kids and rabbinic peers. In another corner, a teen in a king’s hat and cape took deep puffs of pot from a pipe.
From the beginning, the rowdy crowd showed it had no intentions of settling for a mildly amusing, Americanized Purim. Instead, the party started with an old school, Hebrew-only reading of the Megillah by Rabbi Meyer Berkowitz from New York, who slammed his fists on the parchment whenever Haman’s named was pronounced.
After 30 minutes of watching the reading and yelling, a pack of slouching, dreadlocked kids in the back wondered out loud if the gig involved any music. The free hamantaschen and the face-painting and hat-making booth confused them even more. But once the first band, Mozaik, broke out, the dance floor was mobbed.
After a good set from the band, the highlight of the evening came in the form of a rhyme-bustin’ rap-artist/emcee Queen Esther, played by Esther Friedman from Berkeley.
“We can bring this house down, turn this city to a shtetl town,” chimed Esther, who told the Purim story with a goofy, slapstick troupe of clown-actors.
“I’m Jewish — not a princess — I’m a queen! Can I get an Amen? It’s good to be Jews y’all!” Esther whooped.
After the rap, Rabbi Asi Spiegel from Jerusalem, decked out in a red robe and a huge Afro wig, took the stage and delivered a rollicking musical set in Hebrew. Interspersed between songs were praises for Jerusalem and calls for the Messiah.
With a pierced nose and a stud in her forehead, Katlin Toronto listened happily to the music with her mother. Toronto, 18, is not Jewish, but no one could tell since she wore a ceramic Star of David embedded in her braided hair.
“I’m into a lot of the Jewish spirituality and I often go to temple on Fridays,” said Toronto, a Napa resident. The show “is so full of energy. I love it.”
Toronto’s conservatively dressed mother, Zoe Anderson, who is also not Jewish, sat calmly beside her daughter. “I think it’s wonderful and very expressive,” Anderson said. “I didn’t know what to expect — I would have worn a costume.”
Just before midnight, when headliner Perry Farrell still hadn’t gone onstage, Michael Rosenthal, 44, reached the exhaustion point. Rosenthal had come from work, still in his business attire. He was disappointed he couldn’t stay for Farrell, as he is a big fan.
“Only in San Francisco can you hear the Megillah read in a former brothel,” Rosenthal said. “Only here can you find [Farrell’s previous band] Jane’s Addiction and Chassidim all in one place.”
A large and mostly bewildered segment of the audience clearly came for Farrell, who didn’t start up his turntables until midnight. Moaning “Yerushalayim” through a voice synthesizer, Farrell mixed his singing with conga beats and ethereal taped music.
After the party, Langer said the event “touched a lot of people that don’t walk into synagogues and are not involved in the established Jewish community. It brought everyone together and was a great Purim joy.”
Lori Cowen, 29, bounced most of the night in a circle with friends from an Israel trip she took years ago. “I’ve never been to a Purim festival,” said the Sacramento resident. “This is the best dancing outside of Jerusalem. We danced our a—- off.”
So did everyone else, from Orthodox to punk. The Jews, the music, the makeup, the Megillah — life was that good.