It must have been, as it so often seemed to be in those days, the early eighties. I was with my Jewish youth group on a mid-week event - a field trip to the Lubavitcher Chasid Purim schpiel. Sounds exotic? What we did was, we went to the headquarters of UCLA’s most orthodox Jewish community (which was, objectively speaking, pretty damn orthodox) to commemorate the feast of Ahashueras with the reading of the book of Esther and the observation of Purim. Sounds boring? Well then:
I had some pretty good times with the ol’ Jewish youth group, a decent cross-section of moderately well-off kids in the San Fernando Valley in those carefree days just shortly before Moon Unit turned our ideosyncracies into iconographies. We were an energetic and intelligent group of attractive teenagers with a little money in our pockets. Religion was a tertiary or quaternary concern when we got together. We were there, basically, to have fun.
This particular event with the UCLA Lubavitchers, however, was indeed religious in nature. It was the festival of Purim, after all. On Purim, it is ordained that we read the Book of Esther (the only book in the bible that doesn’t mention god) and then celebrate till we can’t tell the good guy in the story from the bad guy. Jews are supposed to get stupid drunk twice a year, and this is one of those times. It’s basically Jewish Mardi Gras, without the inconvenience of Lent.
There were ten or fifteen of us high school kids among the raging throng of ultra-orthodox revellers packed into the generous room. It was hot and crowded and people were dressed in costumes - a triangular fruit cookie, a king, a queen, a villian, a gorilla… The gorilla was up at the bima, or pulpit, exhorting us to celebrate with ever greater zeal and abandon. He was reading to us out of the Book of Esther, one of the five books of the Jewish bible that comes on its scroll, wrapped around a single wooden wand. A one-book scroll is called a “megilla.” The guy in the fuzzy suit telling us the story - he was, of course, the Megilla Gorilla. As befitting the gravity of the event, he wore a skullcap and prayer shawl over his polyester fur.
At one point I found myself near the frontof the crowd. People were noisy, woozy, flushed with drink. The gorilla shouted to the gathered congregation, barely audible over the din, “Who’s the good guy?!!” An inveterate teachers’ pet, I answered - and correctly, no less ("Mordechai"). It was an easy question and I felt only modest pride in my judaic sophistication. That was short-lived, however, as the M.G. jumped down from the bima with a previously-concealed bottle of slivovitz in his hirsute palm. “Keep drinking!,” he bellowed from inside his plastic mask, jamming the bottle in my mouth and tipping it prodigiously down my throat. “Keep drinking! You haven’t had enough yet!”
My recollections of the rest of the evening are somewhat jumbled. And thus it was that the Megilla Gorilla assisted me in fulfilling the commandment that I drink myself stupid for Purim. As it turns out, and I didn’t figure this out till many years later, I actually can’t drink myself stupid. Sick, yes; boorish, unquestionably - but not stupid. Sometimes you’re not supposed to take these things so literally.
To prepare for today’s cookie-baking efforts, I boiled down three fillings last weekend: prune-raisin (with orange juice), bing cherry-nectarine (with shiraz wine and Lyle’s Golden Syrup to take the edge off the fruit), and apricot-mango (with brown sugar). I’d also prepared two double batches of special super-delicious sugarcookie dough, which had rested in the fridge until they were firm and responsive to my ten pound stainless steel rolling pin. I rolled out gorgous sheets of dough exactly one-quarter of an inch thick and produced 150 triangular delicacies, which I am more inclined to call “esthertashen” than “hamentashen,” out of an inveterate need to spurn common customs (the cookies are said to resemble the villian Haman’s hat, so we eat “hamen pockets” to celebrate his downfall; some say, rather, that the little fruit-filled triangles are supposed to remind us of the intimate charms of the beautiful queen Esther - which I like rather better.) I still have a full double batch of dough to work with tomorrow as well. If anyone needs cookies, I can respond to the first five requests for tuppermail. After that, you’ll be on your own. And do keep in mind, experts agree - my tashen, objectively speaking, totally rock.
Purim starts next saturday night. Hamentashen eating is currently ongoing.
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