Haveil Havalim #310 The Post Purim Hangover Edition

Welcome to the March 27, 2011 edition of Haveil Havalim.

Founded by Soccer Dad, Haveil Havalim is a carnival of Jewish blogs -- a weekly collection of Jewish and Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. It's hosted by different bloggers each week and coordinated by Jack.


I have decided to exert some editorial control over this blog carnival. First off I see a blog carnival as a means for quality writers to find readers. I have not included short posts that seemed dashed off or posts that simply offered or linked to other people's material. Being included in this blog carnival is a reward for your work, not for someone else's work. Understand that I am a teacher so yes I take a strong interest in authorship. Second, I see it as a fundamental part of writing that, as opposed to speaking, writing is supposed to be the victory of reason over emotion. It is inevitable that one will sometimes speak in anger. One should never write in anger; a person who does so demonstrates that they do not just have temporary lapses into anger, but that they are fundamentally people of anger and not reason. I think this is particularly important in light of the recent attack in Itamar and the tragic murder of the Fogel family. Posts that struck me as coming from a very angry place were not included. Third, I am not about to put links to blogs I would not normally feel comfortable linking to. Relevant to some submissions, I did not include posts that implied any support for the use of violence by private individuals outside of a State-based legal framework. An extension of this is that I did not include posts implying support for the transformation of any secular democratic States with theocracies. (By what natural means can this be achieved if not by violence?)

To those of you I have not included, please do not take it personally. Feel free to not include me next time you host. Those of you whom I did include should feel honored. Blogging in often a lonely task. For most it is a struggle for readers, comments and the occasional word of praise. I have included you all because I actually thought that each of you had something worthwhile.

Here is an idea. Instead of just the usual comments, readers should put down their votes for the best post of the carnival (no you cannot vote for yourself). As a prize, I agree to do a response post to any piece written by the winner over the course of this coming month.

To start this off I wish to offer pride and place to Rabbi Mordechai Torczyner of The Rebbetzin's Husband for his posts Why Publish? and How to leave your shul. I am an academic in middle of trying to finish off a dissertation and hope to eventually publish it. I struggle with the fear that my years of effort into it will not make a difference and no one will read it. In general, I always enjoy Rabbi Torczyner's posts on life as a shul rabbi as I am the son and grandson of shul rabbis, who grew up realizing how difficult such a job was.

Purim

For Purim, I offer this carnival a pair of humorous pieces of my own, My Purim Shalach Manot and How Many Jewish Historians Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

Yisrael Medad of My Right Word presents A Serious Purim Torah Based on a Zoharic Passage.

Benji Lovitt presents a satirical piece for Purim about the Maccabeats, Macca-Beat It: Look Who’s Getting Tough.


Marilyn Stowe of Marilyn Stowe Family Law and Divorce Blog presents an ethical and legal dilemma involving parental control of a child in Purim and the curious case of M v F & Others.

Batya of  me-ander presents Mishloach Manot From G-d.


Jay3fer of Adventures in Mama-Land debates the value of sending shalach manot in A tisket, a tasket – where’s my mother’s Purim basket???


Yisroel  of Artzeinu offers us One More Reason to Make Aliyah: 2 days of Purim.

Passover 

Amanda of Blessed Little Bird gets ready for Passover and debates the value of quick seders in A Seder, b'seder....

Israel

Harry of Israelity presents Nostalgia Sunday – Old Central Bus Station: Jerusalem and The pause that refreshes.


West Bank Mama presents The Post Terror Attack Ritual.



Rivkah of Bat Aliyah presents Another Israeli First.

Personal

Elle of On Becoming Devoted discusses a new found spirituality in washing vegetables in Learning Disciplines.

History 

 

Chaviva has a post on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and asks the following question: Did you learn about this in your Jewish education? Whether at Sunday School or Yeshiva or day School? Do you think this is relevant to the Jewish educational experience? Should this even be taught through a specifically Jewish lens? And, most importantly, do you think this event can be categorized as a uniquely Jewish event?




That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of haveil havalim using our carnival submission form.

Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

My Purim Shalach Manot

Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim, the classic "they tried to kill us, they failed, let's eat" festival. One of the traditions on this holiday is Shalach Manot where one is supposed to give gift baskets of food to other people. Think of it as reverse trick or treating. I guess this is part of the hobbit heritage of Jews. If gentiles go around in costume to take candy, we go around and give. Now the purpose of Shalach Manot is that it is meant to increase goodwill. That is the sort of absurd social-based thinking one naturally expects from neurotypicals. Anyone with even a hint of a properly functioning logical brain will realize that such a practice is only going to cause stress as people struggle to put together gift baskets to all their acquaintances and nothing but bad feelings to people left out or who received a smaller basket than those they gave to. In other words your basic Christmas shopping fallacy for people who are neurotic enough as it is and really do not need the encouragement. As an Asperger, I am inclined to prove my point through the scientific method. I could hand out baskets of peanuts and raw sugar to diabetics with peanut allergies with a note saying: "Dear acquaintance. I feel nothing but goodwill toward you and have no desire to cause you physical harm, not even to wage Hobbesian warfare at the moment. Please accept this gift as a token of the meaningless ritual gesture it is." I can then have a neurotypical friend measure the rate of hostile social gestures for me to see if there is a statistically significant shift. (To all you neurotypicals out there, this is what we Aspergers call a joke. We will try to explain it to you once we have taken over the world but, for now, you will just have to be patient.)

Here is an example of my actual Shalach Manot, which I am giving out to a few special people in my life. If you are not one of the people receiving one of these it does not mean that I do not like you or that I am even planning on waging Hobbesian war against you sometime in the near future. All it means is that either you are not close at hand in Silverspring MD or that I do not like you as much as some other people.

There is a hidden message in this Shalach Manot, in keeping with me being a Jewish autistic who spends way too much time exploring meta-historical narratives, Jewish Messiahs and apocalypticism, that I wish to share with everyone. At the start of history, this Chinn offers a sinfully delicious Asian pear as the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. (How silly for European Christians to think it could be an apple.) Now that you have eaten the fruit, you are in need of a Jewish Messiah to save your soul with tasty wafers from Israel. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which autistic children still lie enslaved to parents who believe that gluten-free diets will cure them of the mercury that was not in their vaccines and did not cause their autism. For those children, I offer gluten-free potato chips to act as a replacement wafer. For my Messiah does love autistic children and desires that they not burn in hell for eternity. (As for people who actually need gluten-free diets, they can burn for all he cares, but if they entreat him very nicely he might find it in his all-encompassing heart to save them.)    

A Movie for Purim

One Night with the King is a film based on the biblical book of Esther. Just to be clear form this beginning, this is not a good film by any stretch of the imagination. An excellent cast and some fine performances is not enough to compensate for a miserable screenplay. This is a pity because Esther is a great story and there is no reason why it should not make a good film. It has a beautiful heroine, Esther, caught in a dangerous exotic situation; she is a Jew, the niece of the sage Mordachai, forced to marry the Persian King, Achasveros (Xerxes). In order to survive she must hide her true identity. There is a villain, Haman, worthy of a James Bond film, with an unstoppable plot to kill lots of people, mainly all the Jews in the world. There is plenty of violence and intrigue to go around; people get hauled off and executed on a regular basis. In the end the Jews are saved so we can now eat, drink and celebrate. (This is story type narrative in all of its glory, which is why it is almost certainly not a historical event.)

Despite all of the film’s flaws it still managed to prove enjoyable. For one thing I am very fond of the book of Esther so seeing it as a film was worth beholding. Also the film, while fairly faithful to the source material, makes a number of interesting interpretive choices. My take on King Achasveros has tended to swing between the story of Esther itself, which portrays him as an easily manipulated fool, who seems to make most of the important decisions in the story while drunk, and the Talmud, which portrays him as being quite intelligent and very much in charge of the situation. I like to think of Achasveros as the sort of person who may be a clown but is a very smart clown; someone somewhere between Henry VIII and Herman Goering. People underestimate him and think they can manipulate him. Really he has everyone where he wants them and controls everything. The Xerxes of the film, played by Luke Goss (The villain in Hellboy II), is a total hunk. He is the sort of man that, regardless of his crown, girls would fall in love with. And the film plays on the idea that Esther is, at least to some extent, in love with him. Hegai is a very minor character in the story, he is simply the chamberlain in charge of the king’s harem, so I never thought much of him. The film turns him into a major character, who is a friend and confidant of Esther. He is also a giant black man, whose situation as the castrated slave of the king is clearly meant to draw parallels to African slavery in America. James Callis (Gaius Baltar in the television show Battlestar Galactica) steals the show as Haman. He actually manages to make Haman scary and intimidating. Admittedly the film goes way over the top with him, having him wear a swastika necklace and having him yell about the connections between the Greeks and their Democracy and the Jews with their one God and their hoped for savior. (The film was made by Christians so I guess they had to stick a christological reference in somewhere.) The climax of the story has Esther reveal her true identity to Achasveros, while both he and Haman are present at a private banquet that she is hosting. Esther does this in order to forestall the decree to kill the Jews, which Haman had Achasveros sign. Achasveros storms out of the room and Haman falls upon Esther and pleads for mercy. Achasveros comes back and thinks that Haman was attacking Esther. He therefore immediately has Haman executed. The film plays this scene out as Haman thinking he has won and that Esther’s gambit has failed. He starts to mock plead with her before turning and assaulting her.

Honorable mention should be made of John Rhys-Davies (Gimli in Lord of the Rings) who plays Mordachai. He is effective as a sage and caring father figure for Esther. Also honorable mention should be made of John Noble (Denethor in Lord of the Rings) as Prince Admatha. In the story Admatha is simply the name of Haman’s father. The film turns him into an early villain who helps bring Haman into power and whom Haman knocks off before too long.

So in the end this is not a good film, but those who are familiar with the story of Esther should at least get a good laugh out of it.