A Megillah Costume

What are you dressing up as for Purim?

If you’re Julie Seltzer — Torah (and megillah) scribe, MJL writer, and challah baker — then the answer is probably pretty self-evident: You’d go as a megillah, the scroll containing the Purim story, as she did last year.

But what you might not necessarily expect is the exactness, preciseness, and — oh, let’s just say it — the utter geekiness with which she would self-design her costume. Take a second glance at her blouse to the left: Seltzer has inscribed every word of the megillah on her costume, from Achashverosh to Zeresh and everything in between. (Her tights, if you’ll notice, are a list of the ten sons of Haman, the only part of the megillah that suddenly gets broken up into two columns.)

Now, Seltzer’s clothing, she claims, is not a 100% kosher parchment scroll (and, she claims in her write-up of the outfit last year, is “laden, I am sure, with many mistakes”). But if there exists in the World to Come the concept of an “A for effort,” this is the best megillah we’ve seen in a long time — although we can’t wait to see what she’s come up with this year to top it.

Check out a ton of close-ups from the costume here.