A guest post l’kovod Purim by The (Yeshivishe) Shadow. This post originally appeared on his blog, “Fleeting Thoughts of the Shadow”.

The scent of Purim is in the air!

Then again, so is the scent of dead fish, raw meat, fruits, vegetables, and about forty thousand different flavors of halvah. That is because I’m traipsing through Machane Yehuda, searching for components for my Purim costume.

It is a time-honored tradition among yeshiva bochurim learning in Eretz Yisroel to invade Machane Yehuda around Purim time. Unless you plan on buying a bear suit for 500 shekels, the standard bochur’s costume consists of shopping at cheap clothing stores in Machane Yehuda, buying whatever weird clothing you can get your hands on, and mix-’n-matching them in the oddest possible way.

This proves not to be too difficult in terms of finding the stuff – since virtually all the clothing sold there is fair game, in terms of outlandishness – but it can be quite challenging to get the stuff you want before anyone else beats you to it. The simple, cost-effective solution is to fire several warning shots into the air with a .22 caliber pistol, then move in and collect the bounty. Should you find yourself arrested, however, it could potentially ruin your Purim plans, so use the aforementioned idea with caution.

While in Machane Yehuda, it pays to check out some of the other stalls there – particularly the ones selling halvah, since they give out free samples. For the uninitiated, halvah is a sesame seed concoction with the density of cement, only less tasty in some cases, and containing more calories per cubic inch than you would have thought physically possible. To compensate for the ridiculous amount of calories, the shopkeepers add chocolate, coffee, cinnamon, mud, roofing cement, etc. – okay, it doesn’t compensate much calorie-wise, but it does make it taste somewhat better.

To lure people into buying halvah, they offer free samples – tiny cubes of one flavor or another, each with enough fat content to clog a major artery faster than traffic in the Battery Tunnel during rush hour. The idea is that after surviving one piece, one will surely be compelled to buy a larger chunk that will take care of one’s caloric needs for a month. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Personally, I just take a few free samples, then lay down and roll home.

If Machane Yehuda isn’t your speed, you can check out the “drinks district” – a series of beverage boutiques on Shmuel Hanavi between Bar Ilan and Givat Moshe. My personal favorite among these is A. A. Pyup, a store that sells everything from (relatively) tame sodas, to alcoholic beverages with enough kick to stun an elephant. Here, throughout the Purim season, you can find many a wine connoisseur (which is French for “unbearable snob”) shopping for fine wines. I, personally, come here for a nice bottle of wine for my Rebbe, and something cheap for myself.

I haven’t actually spent much time in Geula yet, though that’s bound to be a fun place as well, as long as you avoid getting bleached. For instance, I understand that there are all sorts of unique, Purim-only meshugoyim in Geula, as opposed to the year round meshugoyim that tend to inhabit the neighborhood.

I have, in case you’re wondering, been to the Armenian Shuk in the Old City, which is a great place if you like to negotiate (read: yell at the top of your lungs at the Arab shopkeeper that the item is too expensive, then storm out in a huff). Bargaining is not my forte, though, so I brought along a friend to help me out, and we came away with a white robe and whiter pants for a mere 120 shekels. Not too shabby.

As Purim creeps closer, the music gets louder, the streets livelier, and the scenes ever more chaotic. It’s a great time to be around – the matzav is incomparable to anything in the US. The only real drawback is that this time of year is particularly mesugal for gaining weight. And those halvah samples aren’t helping any…

Raw meat. Next time, I’m gonna take a sample of raw meat instead.