קולטור

The Many Traditions of Purim

In this movie, Nomi and her friends celebrate the holiday of Purim — a festive day marking the defeat of an evil decree to destroy the Jewish people. The story of Purim is told in the Book of Esther, known in Yiddish as Megilas Ester (or simply as di megile), and there are many rich traditions associated with the holiday.

The story in the megile takes place in the ancient Persian empire, and tells of the king Akhashveyresh. He chooses the beautiful Ester as his queen, and not long after, Akhashveyresh’s royal vizier Homen issues a decree to destroy all the Jews of Persia. Ester — who is Jewish — is encouraged by her older cousin Mortkhe to appeal to the king, at great personal peril to herself, to save the Jews. She is successful, Homen is defeated, and the Jews in the empire celebrate their deliverance with feasts and rejoicing, exchanging gifts of food, and giving charity to the poor. To this day, the celebration of Purim includes hearing the megile read aloud in Hebrew, exchanging gifts of food, giving to the poor, and eating a festive meal.

The heroes of the megile are often referred to in Yiddish with a traditional epithet that reflects their role in the story (accented syllables are capitalized in the pronunciation guide):

The mentioning of Homen’s name during the megile reading is traditionally accompanied by the stamping of feet (to signify the blotting out of his name) or by the rattling of noisemakers called gragers. Moby can be seen holding a grager at the end of this lesson’s movie and in the image above.

The gifts of food exchanged on Purim are known in Yiddish as שלח־מנות (shalakh-mones) and in Hebrew as משלוח מנות (mishloach manot). They often include traditional Purim pastries called homen-tashn in Yiddish (literally “Homen pockets”) – three-cornered poppy- or jam-filled cookies. An older Yiddish name for this delicious dessert is montashn (literally “poppy pockets”); it may be that the name of the villain of the Purim story came to be associated with them because of the similarity in sound between mon and an Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation of his name Homon.

The reversal of the evil decree in the Purim story — the overturning of the social order — is reflected in customs such as dressing in costume or mock sermons (“purim-toyre”). This reversal also inspired the custom of the purim-shpil, or Purim play, which had a long tradition amongst Yiddish-speaking Jews in Europe. Allowing for theatrical performance that otherwise had no place in traditional Jewish society, many plays were based on the megile or other biblical stories, and often included comic, satirical elements that mocked local personalities.

The modest purim-shpil even gave birth to future generations of Yiddish theater: Avrom Goldfadn, founder of the celebrated modern Yiddish theater, was undoubtedly influenced by his experiences acting in Purim plays while attending rabbinical seminary. And it was in the spirit of the purim-shpil that Yiddish writer Itsik Manger (1901-1969) created his Megile-lider, or Megile Poems (1936), one of the best known works of Yiddish literature on a Purim theme. Conflating the ancient Persian setting of the story with elements of an Eastern European shtetl, Manger’s version of the story derives humor from anachronism while serving as social critique – it does not have such a happy ending as the original megile.

Another Yiddish Purim story inspired Nomi and Moby’s adventure in this lesson, Sholem Aleichem’s “Tsvey shalakh-monesn”. Like Manger’s Megile-lider, the story does not have a happy ending. Two poor serving girls meet in the shtetl street, each carrying shalakh-mones to the household of the other. They haven’t yet had anything to eat that day and they can’t resist sitting down and snacking on the delicacies until there is very little left. The depleted shalakh-monesn cause a great dispute between the two households, each of which feels insulted by the meager Purim gift it received from the other. When the truth comes out, both serving girls are dismissed from their jobs.

At the beginning of the movie Nomi is singing the refrain of “Homen-tashn” by M. Pirozhnikov, a well-known children’s song about an amateur baker named Yakhne-Dvoshe and her attempt to make homen-tashn (see the text of the song below). Yakhne-Dvoshe’s homen-tashn may turn out “half raw, half burned”, but the upbeat tune of the refrain makes light of the disaster and reflects the general merriment of the day.

In our movie, Nomi and her friends get into the joyful spirit of the Purim holiday by wearing fun costumes and exchanging shalakh-monesn. Moby combines two Purim traditions at once by dressing up as a large homen-tash. And in line with the hopeful and celebratory feeling of the day, in our version of the story of tsvey shalakh-monesn Moby averts disaster!

Recording of the song Homen-tashn