Hamantaschen & Putin-taschen for Purim: Fighting Evil with Cookies
Robin B. Zeiger, Ph.D.
This year for the Jewish holiday of Purim (March 16–18th), Hamantaschen has become Putin-taschen thanks to some caring and creative Israeli students in Warsaw. Hamantaschen is a triangular shaped cookie that was named after Haman, the evil villain in a 5th century BCE Persian story. The Purim story, like the Putin story, is a tale of war waged against the innocent. Haman, an official of the Persian King Achasverus, sought to destroy all the Jews in the kingdom. Via the miraculous Hand of God, Queen Esther, herself a Jew, and her uncle Mordechai saved the day. Haman was destroyed and the Jews banded together to fight successfully for their lives.
To this day, Jews celebrate the holiday with merriment, food, wine, and charity toward the less fortunate. Enter the Hamantaschen. In Hebrew the cookies are called oznai Haman(Haman’s ears). Other traditions state that the shape is meant to reflect Haman’s three-sided hat. With joy, we eat the cookies. In a sense the evil is chewed upon, destroyed and ingested.
I was writing this blog while deeply reflecting upon the meaning of Hamantaschen when a news article on Putintaschens arrived at my “doorstep.” Gefen Levy is an Israeli who is now a medical student in Warsaw. She has been volunteering for From the Depths, an organization set up by descendants of Holocaust survivors as a bridge between the past and the future. She has also been hosting refugees in her small apartment. She and her friends used her grandmother’s recipe from Morocco to bake the three-cornered cookies, in order to enable the refugees from Ukraine to smile during difficult times. It seemed obvious to call them Putintaschen after Putin’s ears.
However, there is something not so obvious about the Hamantaschen and the Purim story. We assume it is the triumph of good over evil. Like all such stories, there is a good guy and a bad guy. Yet, there is a much more subtle message about the potential evil that is inside of all of us. This we must know about, chew upon and digest. This we must transform in order to fully eradicate evil from the world.
The Jewish historical accounting of evil begins about 3500 hundred years ago after the Exodus from Egypt. With God’s help, the Jews escaped from the evil Egyptian Pharoah’s rule into the desert. While on their way to freedom in Israel, they were attacked from behind by one nation, Amalek. Amalek became the symbol par excellence of evil; a nation that attacks the weak from behind. Amalek was to be fully destroyed, yet some survived. Tradition has it that the most evil people in the world are descendants of Amalek. Enter Haman. Enter Hitler. Enter Putin.
Yet this is still a story of black and white; evil and good. Jewish tradition brings a deeply important insight to this “black and white.” The Talmud states that every human being is an entire world. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810) s a famous Jewish mystic and Hasid states that all nations exist in varying degrees in all individuals. Nechama Nadborny-Burgeman (2003) in her book, entitled Israel and the Seventy Dimensions of the World: A Kabbalstic [Jewish Mystical] Approach to an Eternally Enduring World Peace reflects upon the above sources and states,
“…we are challenged first of all to destroy the Amalek in ourselves…world peace depends on our inner peace.”
Each year around Purim Jews are commanded to “remember” Amalek in order to obliterate the nation. This charge appears to be an oxymoron. How do we remember to forget? The Hamantaschen enters the story.
I believe we ingest the pieces of Haman not only to focus on the evil outside in the world, but to work at obliterating the evil inside of all of us. We must know of our own shadow to meet the shadow of others.
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness’s of other people. Carl Jung
This year, the Hamantaschen turned Putintaschen is deeply meaningful to me. My mind travels to the pure evil of destroying Ukranian houses and buildings of civilians. It travels to the unnecessary death of civilians. I read about the pregnant woman and baby who died in the Mariupol maternity hospital bombing and I thought of Amalek.
I appreciate individuals like Gefen Levy. I am grateful to all those on the ground who are helping in Ukraine and in neighboring countries. I am saddened that we still must work so hard to obliterate Amalek within our midst. We must work to know of all the evil — both within and without to make the world a safer and kinder place.
Perhaps my eating of Hamentaschen will take on a higher holiness this year.
