Photo Credit: Jewish Press Long before the novel coronavirus made masks a fashionable part of a respectable wardrobe, Jews were wearing masks on Purim. And a thousand years before that, Moses covered his face with a mask because his face shone so brightly after descending from Mount Sinai (see Exodus 34:29-35). The word the Torah uses in the latter context is â masveh.â The word early halachic authorities use in reference to masks on Purim is â partzufim,â which literally means faces (see Mahari Mintz 17, Rema to Orach Chaim 696:8, and Rabbi Yuzpa Shamashâs account of the old traditions of the Jewish community in Worms).