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What is Your Mask?

By Asher Crispe: January 21, 2011: Category Interactions

For the next few weeks we would like you to join us in a competition about masks. We all fashion masks, both real and imaginary, when interacting with others or even when gazing at ourselves in quiet reflection. What are these masks? How can we identify themask from what is underneath it? What does the mask reveal and what does it conceal?

For the competition you have the following options: You can respond to the question, “What is Your Mask?” in the following ways: (feel free to interpret the question as literally or as figuratively as you like…)

Send us a photo of your interpretation of your “mask” (please send as a .jpg)
Send us an original drawing of your “mask”
Send us a short video about your “mask” (you would post on YouTube of Vimeo and send the link)
Send us a written piece (less than 1,000 words please)

Our staff and editors will then select the top 10 to post on the website beginning 3/1/11. The posted top 10 will then have their own featured section where the audience will get to vote for them. At midnight eastern standard time of 3/15/11, we will close the voting and tally the numbers. On the following day we will post the results and the top three winners will receive the following prizes.

1st Prize—$100 Amazon.com gift card

2nd Prize—$50 Amazon.com gift card

3rd Prize—$25 Amazon.com gift card

Entries are limited to one per person. Interinclusion employees, friends and family are not eligible. Submissions should be sent to editor@interinclusion.org and be received no latter that midnight 2/28/11 Eastern Standard Time. Please make sure toinclude your name and email (this information will be used solely for the competition in order to inform the prize winners and will not be shared with anyone). The winning entries will remain featured through 3/31/11 and then will be archived on the site under the What is Your Mask? competition page.

The purpose of this competition is to delve into the mystical dimensions of the upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim which falls on the 14th of Adar (3/20/11) [unless you happen to be in either Jerusalem or Shushan in which case it is celebrated on the 15th of Adar (3/21/11)]. Purim is the holiday celebrating the deliverance of the Jewish people who were living throughout the Persian Empire from the hands of Haman the Agagite who sought their total destruction durning the 4th century BCE.

Jewish tradition includes masquerading on this holiday. One of the reasons for this has to do with the scroll of Esther and the story of Purim that it tells. This scroll has no explicit mention of God. Rather, the story is understood to be an example of howDivine involvement in our lives is dressed up in the garb of the natural world. The miraculous is sometimes masked in nature itself. Even the name of the scroll of Esther provides a helpful hint: Megilat Esther relates to the words megalet hester meaning to reveal the concealed. As a result, the entire Purim story is one of hidden faces or masks, particularly that of the Divine. (Stay tuned for more articles related to Purim and the concept of masks here at Interinclusion.org!)