Jews Re-create Purim’s Ancient City, One Lego at a Time

c. 2007 Religion News Service BOUND BROOK, N.J. _ Great cities in history are usually made of brick, mortar and stone. But at Congregation Knesseth Israel, the biblical city of Shushan was reincarnated in a 21st-century form _ a scale reconstruction made from about 20,000 multicolored Lego blocks. In a project at the temple’s Hebrew […]

c. 2007 Religion News Service

BOUND BROOK, N.J. _ Great cities in history are usually made of brick, mortar and stone. But at Congregation Knesseth Israel, the biblical city of Shushan was reincarnated in a 21st-century form _ a scale reconstruction made from about 20,000 multicolored Lego blocks.

In a project at the temple’s Hebrew school, more than 100 people came together to re-create the city piece by piece.


Across 400 square feet of a plastic sheet, thousands of Lego pieces traced the lines of the ancient Persian capital, where the dramatic events of the Purim story took place. The pattern on the sheet outlined houses with zig-zag shapes, a wall that lined the city’s perimeter, a synagogue and a palace.

Groups were assigned to build specific parts of the city. Parents sat cross-legged by children sprawled against the city wall, concentrating on their work. Younger members simply toddled through the replica playing with smaller pieces, but everyone was engaged in the effort.

Digging through a bin of Lego pieces, members of the Weiss family of Green Brook had the regal task of constructing parts of the palace and the benches.

“I think it’s pretty cool,” said Zoe Weiss, 9, about re-creating an important landmark in Jewish history. “It makes me know how it looks.”

Her mother, Caren Weiss, sat by her children and combed through a bin for just the right pieces, tiny white ones to be legs of the benches.

“Any time kids can get hands-on activities, it helps them understand better,” she said. “It’s a kind of live history.”

The rebuilding of the historic Shushan, known to Greek and Western history as Susa, with guidance from Building Blocks Workshops, was a first for the Bound Brook temple. It was part of the celebration of Purim, a joyful holiday commemorating how the Israelites overcame persecution thousands of years ago.


Purim is based on the tale of Esther, a Jewish queen who worked with her uncle, Mordecai, to foil a plot by the prime minister, Haman, to exterminate the Jews of Persia. Children dress up as characters and make lots of noise to drown out Haman’s name whenever he is mentioned.

In between serving as the crane to move completed houses into their outlined plots, Rabbi Steven Kirschner said the project was rolling along well.

“It puts a physicality to it,” the rabbi said. “Otherwise, it’s just a story in the book.”

Max Rutka, 6, sat on the floor with his father, Tim, as they pieced together a multicolored conglomerate of Lego pieces intended to be the abode of one of Shushan’s ministers.

Max’s grandmother, Nancy Newman, was visiting from Florida for Max’s birthday and got to help in the construction. She said in her days in Hebrew school she had never seen anything like this, but saw the benefits of the hands-on project.

“They visualize,” she said of the project’s ultimate outcome.

Ellie Gerber, who has been in the congregation for about 50 years, looked on at the next generation with a sparkle in her eye.


“We want our kids to love coming to temple,” she said. “It stays with them forever.”

As the clock clicked closer to noon, the city was falling into place.

“You did an awesome job today,” said architect Stephen W. Schwartz, of Building Blocks Workshops, who coordinated the project. As the creator of the two-hour workshops, he has supervised Jewish youth in creating scale models of Jerusalem, the Warsaw Ghetto and other significant structures in Jewish history.

He stood in the middle of the city, close to the palace gates, and directed the onlookers on a tour of the historic city complete with a blue-and-white synagogue.

“We’re able to actually see some semblance of what it was like to live in Shushan,” he said, congratulating the children on one of the finest replications he’s seen.

Schwartz comes to each program with the complete package: an outline of the building project, thousands of Lego pieces and a history lesson to make the story come alive. He brought 60,000 pieces with him this time but used only 20,000.

Justin Horgan, 12 of Edison, noted the amount of work that went into building the temple, but also valued his part in constructing an image that will stay with him.


“You get a picture in your mind of what it looks like,” he said.

(Rohina Phadnis writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

KRE/PH END PHADNIS

Editors: To obtain photos of the Lego city in Bound Brook, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

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