(Exodus 30:11 – 34:35)
“The Lesson of Hamantaschen”
The hamantaschen is the fortune cookie of Jewish deserts. Originally a German delicacy from the middle ages it was adapted by the Jews to be used on the holiday of Purim. Like a fortune cookie, the hamantaschen starts with a circular piece of dough (usually made by pressing a cup down on rolled cookie dough). The corners of the dough are then pinched to create a triangle shape, a filling is inserted in the middle, and the cookie is baked for approximately twenty minutes. As Shiri Kester and our STARI youth group learned this week, the process is quite time intensive and difficult (thanks to all of their hard work, four hundred or more were baked for our Purim service). Instead of a written fortune, our cookies have more of a subliminal message conveying our hatred of Haman. The cookie representing, alternatively his three cornered hat, his ears that were cut off in the gallows, or the pockets of money he gave to the king to attain permission to doom our people.
But, I believe there is a more profound and subtle message as well about the nature of evil in the world and how we need confront the villains of history. The secret, perhaps, can be found in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, which features the catastrophe of the Golden Calf. Let me refresh your memory on the story, Moses is up with God on Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights receiving the Ten Commandments. The people grow impatient and beg Aaron to build them an idol out of gold. When Moses sees the scene of the Israelites dancing in front of the golden calf in his descent down the mountain he slams the tablets on the ground, smashing them into pieces.
The person to focus on in the story is not Moses, but Aaron, who actually constructed the idol. Instead of being villainized, he is celebrated by the rabbis, as they write in the Talmud, “be among the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving people and bringing them close to Torah” (Pirkei Avot, 1:12). How can this be? It is easy to create bad guys it is harder to see the complexity of the choices people make in the moment that they make them. The Torah does not tell us what Aaron was thinking when he decided to make the Golden Calf. Perhaps, his thought process was more complex than we give him credit.
Now, back to the hamantaschen – as much as we want to hate them like we hate Haman, we simply can’t. They are just too yummy. As we eat the filling of poppy seed, apricot jelly, or Hershey Kisses, we recognize that even Haman had something sweet to offer the world.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex
Last Updated on 03/02/2018 by wpadm