I am sure you will all agree with the Israeli Post-Zionist Left that the time has really come to update the Scroll of Esther. I mean, come on, the Scroll is the epitome of political incorrectness and male chauvinist sexism. You could never get that old out-of-date version reprinted in Tikkun magazine or in Haaretz, what with those sections about how the Jews run around killing anti-Semites and anti-Jewish terrorists instead of negotiating with them.
So at the instigation of Yossi Sarid, Amram Mitzna and Shulamit Aloni, I have undertaken a politically correct rewrite. Shimon Peres expects you all to use the Politically Correct Scroll of Esther this Purim. "Renewal Rabbi" Arthur Waskow says he likes it even better than the Black Liberation Passover Haggadah he published.
Here is a synopsis:
King Ahashveros is having a party with recreational mind-expanding drugs endorsed by Tikkun magazine. He invites Queen Vashti to join, but she is off at a Freedom of Choice pro-abortion demonstration and never shows up. The King has his self-esteem offended by this. He orders her removed from the throne, but Vashti bursts into the King's chambers, calls him a power-fetished patriarchal male chauvinist pig who thinks he can just order women around. She then burns her bra, and throws mud at the king.
So then the chauvinist king holds a beauty contest to find himself a new queen and girlfriend. But Vashti and the ?sistuhs? disrupt it and scream "Meat Market!" and throw bottles of blood and paint at the King and the judges. They demand an affirmative action program as compensation.
Eventually the King meets Esther at a singles bar and propositions her.
"And what makes you so sure I am a heterosexual," she responds.
Esther locks the King in the Royal Washroom for a week until he repents his homophobic and sexist attitudes, attends a sensitivity retraining seminar, and agrees to allow free abortions throughout the Kingdom, paid for by a single-payer health care provider.
But the evil Haman is still up to his evil deeds. He is plotting to kill all the Jews for not attending his Earth Day and Peace Now demonstrations. Mordecai, the uncle of Esther, suggests that Haman be dealt with in a progressive manner. Esther convinces King Ahashveros to give Haman and his kin their own state. Mordecai provides them with guns and tells everyone that the Hamanites will act as a moderating and restraining force and will suppress all the really radical terrorists.
Haman and his sons then launch a series of suicide bombings and rocket attacks, and deny that the Jewish Temple ever really existed at all. Mordecai keeps offering them more and more territory in exchange for their promising not to promise anything. Finally Mordecai embraces Haman when they both get Nobel Prizes for Peace. Ex-Queen Vashti says she would rather shake Haman's hand than that of King Ahashveros, any day.
Vashti and Esther then dump the king and set up a lesbian bar in Shushan, where they live happily ever after.
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Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout (available from Gefen Publishing House: http://161.58.167.199/shop/indi_scout.htm).
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Spend Passover with Arutz Sheva at a resort in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or Kfar Pines (near Hadera). Click here for info.
So at the instigation of Yossi Sarid, Amram Mitzna and Shulamit Aloni, I have undertaken a politically correct rewrite. Shimon Peres expects you all to use the Politically Correct Scroll of Esther this Purim. "Renewal Rabbi" Arthur Waskow says he likes it even better than the Black Liberation Passover Haggadah he published.
Here is a synopsis:
King Ahashveros is having a party with recreational mind-expanding drugs endorsed by Tikkun magazine. He invites Queen Vashti to join, but she is off at a Freedom of Choice pro-abortion demonstration and never shows up. The King has his self-esteem offended by this. He orders her removed from the throne, but Vashti bursts into the King's chambers, calls him a power-fetished patriarchal male chauvinist pig who thinks he can just order women around. She then burns her bra, and throws mud at the king.
So then the chauvinist king holds a beauty contest to find himself a new queen and girlfriend. But Vashti and the ?sistuhs? disrupt it and scream "Meat Market!" and throw bottles of blood and paint at the King and the judges. They demand an affirmative action program as compensation.
Eventually the King meets Esther at a singles bar and propositions her.
"And what makes you so sure I am a heterosexual," she responds.
Esther locks the King in the Royal Washroom for a week until he repents his homophobic and sexist attitudes, attends a sensitivity retraining seminar, and agrees to allow free abortions throughout the Kingdom, paid for by a single-payer health care provider.
But the evil Haman is still up to his evil deeds. He is plotting to kill all the Jews for not attending his Earth Day and Peace Now demonstrations. Mordecai, the uncle of Esther, suggests that Haman be dealt with in a progressive manner. Esther convinces King Ahashveros to give Haman and his kin their own state. Mordecai provides them with guns and tells everyone that the Hamanites will act as a moderating and restraining force and will suppress all the really radical terrorists.
Haman and his sons then launch a series of suicide bombings and rocket attacks, and deny that the Jewish Temple ever really existed at all. Mordecai keeps offering them more and more territory in exchange for their promising not to promise anything. Finally Mordecai embraces Haman when they both get Nobel Prizes for Peace. Ex-Queen Vashti says she would rather shake Haman's hand than that of King Ahashveros, any day.
Vashti and Esther then dump the king and set up a lesbian bar in Shushan, where they live happily ever after.
--------------------------------------------------------
Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout (available from Gefen Publishing House: http://161.58.167.199/shop/indi_scout.htm).
************
Spend Passover with Arutz Sheva at a resort in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or Kfar Pines (near Hadera). Click here for info.