The Jewish Festival of Purim is being celebrated this lunchtime at London’s Canary Wharf where 400 people, including children in fancy dress, are enjoying a slap-up meal at the East Wintergarden.
Live music is being laid on and they’re giving out Hamantaschen—small pastries filled with poppy seeds.
Among guests are pensioners from the Beaumont day care centre at Stepney Green and members of the Holocaust Survivors centre and the East London Orthodox Synagogues Association.
Canary Wharf Group is hosting the lunch and also sending out gifts of food to community groups to distribute.
Canary Wharf Group’s Danny Seliger said: “Purim is one of the best examples of the community coming together—and is fun.”
Purim is told in the Book of Esther which is read from a scroll called a Megillah, the story of an evil dictator Haman who tried to destroy the Jewish communities in the old Persian Empire 3,000 years ago.
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