SAN DIEGO—There was an improbable assortment of characters at the Purim carnival yesterday at Ohr Shalom Synagogue. Of course, there were little girls dressed as Esther, and there was a King Ahashuerus, but the cast included a masked Mexican wrestler, Superman, Buzz Lightyear, an Indian princess, a monk, a Chasidic rabbi, and many people who were dressed in 21st century streetwear.

How, I wondered, was it possible for all these personages to be together at the same time in the same room? And then, in the tradition of Purim shpiels, the answer slowly dawned on me.

Once upon a recent time there was a Chasidic rabbi (LeAnne Adams) and a priest (Zeji Ozeri) who each ate one too many of the magical hamentaschen. The effect on them was wondrous because neither could tell the difference between the phrase "Blessed be Mordechai" and "Cursed be Haman." Shedding their natural reserve, they started competing with each other to see who could chant the most arcane and antiquarian incantation. Domini, Dominicas, Who's the Franciscan Dominican? intoned the priest, dressed in special monk's garb. Then the rabbi chanted a bracha d' bracha, and somehow, the two magical phrases swirled and eddied together, so that they were launched right out of the 21st century and back, back, back, to the days of ancient Persia.

But what had they done? What had their interference with time wrought? There was King Ahashuerus (Abraham Talerman) and Queen Esther (Emily Talerman, 5) but instead of Esther being the size of a grown-up queen, she had been transformed to the size of a young princess. As pretty as she was, she needed to be much, much bigger to share the throne of Persia with Ahashuerus in this, the time after Haman's vanquishment.

Learning of this by an Outernet message that had been sent to them across time zones, the rabbi and the priest decided that they must do something to set matters right. They needed a new incantation to turn Esther back to her former size."Let me try!" said the priest, "I think I know an incantation that will do it. I sort of learned it in seminary one day..."

"Sort of?" asked the rabbi.

"Well," admitted the priest, "I didn't think it was information that I ever would really need, so I might have dozed off during the monsignor's lecture."

"Try it anyway," counseled the rabbi. "After all, what have we to lose? We certainly can't leave Esther so young."

"All right," said the priest, "but you must turn your back, and cover your ears, because this incantation is truly secret, and if anyone knew that I said it with you in the room, I'd have to turn in my monk's robe. Promise me you won't listen."

"I promise," said the rabbi, and being a man of his word, he blocked his ears so not a word of the magical phrase the priest was saying registered in his consciousness.

There was a poof, and then the two clergy men cried in wonderment. Esther, indeed, has been transformed, but instead of getting older, she had turned into an even younger version of the princess. (Esther Dabbah, 16 months).

"Ay, muy bonita," the rabbi and the priest agreed."But she also is far too young to rule all of Persia with King Ahashuerus. We must find some way to make her older."

The Chasidic rabbi said "well, I am really too young to be studying Kabbalah, much less any of the other mystical forms of Judaism, for I am not yet 40, and I have never been married. Still I am a man of great curiosity and I have overheard some learned rabbis speak of these things. Perhaps I could find the right words to turn Esther back to the way she was. Please you must cover your eyes, because I will be breaking that vessel on the bureau over there, and from it will emanate a light so bright that you must not look into it directly, lest you be blinded. I too will cover my eyes, and say words that appear diagonally on a certain panel of a Torah scroll. There is a chance, but only a chance, that Esther will turn back into herself."

The rabbi tipped over the vessel, intense light bathed the room, and he said the words which appear diagonally on the Torah scroll. But he said them as they appear from top to bottom, left to right, instead of from bottom to top, right to left. Whoosh! Once again the beautiful Esther was transformed, this time into a beautiful American Indian princess (Amanda Kucinski, 8). "Well," said the rabbi, "she has indeed grown older, and is quite beautiful. But she still is not old enough! What can we do? How can we ever restore Esther to her actual age?"

"Let us consult the priestess at the Great Oracle," said the priest. "That wouldn't be a very kosher thing for me to do," said the rabbi, "but I am at wit's end. If we don't act soon, perhaps the changes that we have made will become permanent, and history will be changed, which will cause our present to be changed. Who knows? Perhaps by changing the past, we will have caused things to have happened that might even change us. Your father might not have met your mother, or perhaps even further back in time my triple great-grandfather may not have known my triple great-grandmother, and, in either event, neither one of us would be born."

"You are right," said the priest, "we must hurry!" So off they went to the great climbing wall, where the priestess (Yahel Yanofsky, a cochair of the event with Mina Cohen), dressed in the bathrobe and pajamas of a 21st Century resident of Chula Vista, was explaining to the great Mexican wrestler Mil Mascaras (Bruce Yanofsky) that in order for anyone to ready himself to travel back in time, he would have to learn to hurdle the tower with one jump, and then come down a magic slide.

"But," said the wrestler, "to be able to leap a tall tower at a single bound, I'd have to run faster than a speeding bullet, and be more powerful than a locomotive! I am a great wrestler--all the Spanish-speaking world knows this--but there is no man who can do what you ask."

"No ordinary man, perhaps," said a chorus of Six Young Women With Magic Frisbees (top row: Liza Tacher, Galia Lesorek, Jackie Cohen; bottom row: Nicole Tacher, Galit Fux, Daniela Tacher). But there is one extraordinary man who can do as you ask. "Often he is disguised as the mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet, Clark Kent, but when he takes off his glasses and steps out of his business suit, he is revealed for his true self, the mighty Superman—who, by the way, fits right into this story because he was created by two nice Jewish boys, Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster."

"Superman?" asked the rabbi. "Do you think we could persuade him to help us? Isn't he awfully busy fighting for truth, justice and the American way?"

"That he is," agreed the Six Young Women With Magic Frisbees, "but if we twirl our frisbees in a certain way, it will cause kaleidoscopic kryptonite to radiate into the universe and will bring him here, stronger than ever, and we will ask him to help us!" So on the count of three, the Six Young Women With Magic Frisbees began twirling and twirling, and they too uttered an incantation: "Oh, mighty Superman, come, please, help the Jews of ancient Persia, for without their Queen Esther being an adult, who knows what might become of them! Please Superman, render us aid. And, oh, if you have a friend, bring him—especially if he is single!"

Tum ta dum, tum tadada tadum, swelled the theme music.

"Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! Now it's going down the magic slide! It's--

"Superman!" everyone shouted with excitement.

Indeed, it was Superman, the Man of Steel (Shor Masori, 6), wearing his favorite kippah. Everyone crowded around him, all talking at once. "To go back in time," he said, "I shall have to travel at superspeed in a counter-clockwise direction around the earth! I will need to go faster and faster, until the pages of the calendar go backwards."

"Yes, Superman, that you must," agreed the rabbi and the priest. "And please you need to do so quickly, lest the changes that we made be locked into place forever, and all of time and all of earth's history be changed forever!"

"This is serious, no doubt about it, but for that kind of flying, I will need something to give me more energy," Superman declared. "By any chance do you have any more of that hamantaschen? I'm not fussy about the filling. It can be apricot, raspberry, chocolate--really whatever you have."

The rabbi, the priest, the priestess, the famous Mexican wrestler, and the Six Young Women With Magic Frisbees scattered in many directions, all looking for hamantaschen suitable for a Superman.

"Here, here, I found one," said one of the Six Young Women.

"Hear! Hear!" roared everyone else in approval.

Mindful of their injunction to hurry, Superman crammed the hamantaschen down his mouth, then told a special friend to hold onto his cape. He leaped into the air, clearing the magical tower easily, and soon was in the stratosphere, flying faster and faster in counter- clockwise direction around the earth... 2008.. 1908.. 1608... 1208...812....back, back the years went..... 452.... 223.... 10 BCE.... 145 BCE ... until he at last he stopped in 356 BCE....

"Are you okay?" he asked his friend, Buzz Lightyear (Jacob Kucinski, 4).

"Just fine," said Buzz. "Now how can I help?"

"There is magic fishing well," said Superman. "There are many things I can do, but one trick I never mastered was being two places at the same time. I need you to fish from the magic well a capsule with the secret words that will turn Esther back into herself. While you are doing that, I will be twirling so fast that I will create a vortex that will allow you to communicate directly with Rabbi Scott Meltzer and the Pure-Hearted Children of Ohr Shalom. After you read to them the words, Rabbi Meltzer will put on his magical red baseball cap and then the children will sing the words in their melodic, tender, sweet voices, and this will break the previous spell and set everything back to order."

"Rabbi Meltzer will sing too?" asked Buzz.

"No," for this spell to work, "it will be only the children. He will lip synch."

Buzz did as Superman urged, and soon fished out the words, which, thanks to Superman's whirling and twirling, were transmitted to Rabbi Meltzer and to the Pure-Hearted Children of Ohr Shalom, who had gathered around him on the steps of the social hall at Ohr Shalom Synagogue in 21st Century San Diego. The children (from left, back turned, Noa Rosenbaum, Nadiv Meltzer as Spiderman, Shayna Meltzer, Maia Larom, Kira Binstock, Roni Grushkevich, and Carolina Levine) being pure, immediately recognized the words and sang them with bell-like clarity:

"Oh-seh shalom bimromav," the children sang, with such tenderness and sweetness that everyone in the social hall who ever had done a bad thing, or who had ever thought an evil thought, was washed in purifying goodness. "Ooh-yah seh shalom aleinu..." The words entered the vortex that Superman had created, then went back, back and back through time, and across the globe, to ancient Persia.

There the words swirled round and around Queen Esther, who soon was enveloped in a pure white mist. She could feel herself being changed into the pure bride (Nancy Harrison) that she once had been, sparking radiantly, and ever ready to save her people, the Jews, no matter what foe should ever rise up against them.

"Thanks, Buzz Light Year," she said. "And to you, Superman, I offer my special thanks. Without your superpowers, all of human history might have been changed. It's a good thing that the Six Young Women With Magic Frisbees released all that kaleidoscopic kryptonite into the air, or I don't know what we would have done!"

"Queen Esther," said Superman, "I am very glad that they summoned me, and I also am very pleased that Rabbi Meltzer and the Pure-Hearted Children of Ohr Shalom sang that wonderful song about peace. Not only have they and good old Buzz Lightyear helped me restore everything to the way it was supposed to be, but in so doing, they have revealed to me a secret that I shall treasure forever."

"Such a secret!" enthused Queen Esther. "What could it be? Pray tell!"

"Well," said Superman, whispering into the queen's ear. "You sure look like a younger version of my grandma!"

By Sheila Orysiek

SAN DIEGO—Autumn in San Diego brings with it the possibility of rain.  By that time we have usually not had rain - a real rain - rain that lasts more than a few minutes - for many months.  When I first moved here from Philadelphia I was mystified when my neighbors ran outside to touch, feel, look at, and get wet by - rain.  How silly, I thought. Since when does one go outside purposely to get wet by drops of water falling from a cloud?  But, having lived here for over 40 years, now I know - I, too, run out and relish the rain.

Rain in San Diego has a difficult time getting started; it changes its mind many times, and usually ends up deciding not to.  However, when it does finally descend it does so swiftly and is just as quickly gone.  The birds look perplexed, the plants rejoice, and the cats are shocked.  If the rain is gentle, spider webs will survive and become a lace of crystal globules strung throughout the garden, reflecting the returning sun.  San Diegans don’t bother to break out their umbrellas until the third day and since it almost never rains for three consecutive days, everyone just hurries about (or not), in a state of denial.  A child once told me she didn’t think her shoes would really and truly - actually - get wet if she walked through puddles.  She had little experience with puddles.

Sometimes, of course, it is possible to have too much of a good thing.  This is evident in the Torah portion which includes the story of the Flood.  But even then, rain washed away that which G-D wished to be gone, and gave a new start to the creation He had begun.  Of course, having an ark helps; a lot.  Rain for crops was one of the items promised in Deuteronomy if the Israelites obeyed G-D’s laws. Fortunately, even a rainy city like Philadelphia doesn’t experience forty days of it in a row.  It is also not like the rain in San Diego - not the same pace, or the same smell, nor the same result.  Let me tell you about the rain in Philadelphia.

It rains often in Philadelphia and it rains a lot.  The early spring rain is sometimes not rain at all but sleet - a rain of ice.  It coats the bare limbs of the maple and oak trees that line the city streets.  Their boughs stretch across the roadways and the icicles hang downward like huge ornaments.  The power lines are hung with ice, too, resembling teeth in a shark’s jaw.  The city becomes a magnificent crystal chandelier lit with the rays of a warming sun.  As the icicles melt drip by drip and eventually crash and die, children pick up the shards of ice and carry them gleefully about, licking the drops when mothers are not looking. 

The rain in the latter part of spring is much different - softer, soothing.  It is a rain that delicately spatters the brave daffodils and coaxes to life the seeds and bulbs awakening in the still cold earth.  Within hours a bare tree with only hard leaf buds is transformed into a new pale green umbrella of foliage - the gentle rain a promise of life and warmth to come.  As crocuses poke upward,  the earth literally cracks from below with their life force, yielding to what must be; the force of the birthing cycle.

But the rain of summer is the most frightening.  A clear hot day suddenly becomes torpid with humidity and heavy with foreboding.  The sky within minutes can turn fearful - a distant boiling cloud approaches and turns quickly from gray to black to violet.  Soon the entire heaven is purple with anger.  One can hear its fury in a rumble of discontent as the clouds crash one upon another.  Then flashes of instantaneous light crack the firmament followed by thunder so loud the ground and everything upon it seems frozen in time; enveloped in sound.  We scurry about securing patio furniture, children’s toys and garden tools.  Run inside the house - close all the windows - keep out nature’s violence! If you are a child you make silent promises to be a better child in the future.  

The first drops of rain of a summer storm fall slowly - large drops - as large as silver dollars.  They hit the still hot pavements and steam into nothingness.  Then more quickly the water falls until it sheets the window panes and blurs all the faces pressed against them looking outward at what G-D has wrought.  And then it passes - the storm roars away.  The smashes of thunder turn to grumbles - getting more distant.  The air is lighter now and slightly cooler - at least for a while.

The rain of autumn is a dismal rain.  It tears the last leaves off the trees and washes out the vivid colors we have enjoyed.  Now all is gray.  The rain never begins and never stops - it just continues to drip day by day, forever.  It makes a sorry mess of weekend plans and a somber note to daylight hours.  Going to work or school is almost a relief from the gloomy prospect outside.  There is no break in the clouds; one forgets the sky can be blue.  The rain continues until all color is erased.

In winter it doesn’t rain at all - it snows.  The water floats down in the form of six pointed stars.  For our infinite wonder and amusement all the stars ever formed in such a way are made differently from each other - as we are different from each other.  It falls softly and silences the city; or furiously and becomes a blinding blizzard. It cushions known forms and creates others.  For a few hours the old city is turned into a clean, white fairyland; a struggle for adults with shovels and work to do - a theme park for children.  There are hills to slide down and forts to be built.  And, best of all, the schools are closed and there is time to enjoy this wonder, unless one is abed with a bad winter cold and then it is no fun at all. 

Orysiek is a freelance writer based in San Diego

JERUSALEM DIARIES


Israel's 60th Anniversary celebration will highlight Nigerian Christian tourists

By Judy Lash Balint

JERUSALEM—Guess who's opening Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations this week? A delegation of rabbis? An exuberant group of birthright kids from overseas? Representatives of Jewish organizations worldwide?

Nope--the opening act of our 60th anniversary will be a mass prayer session of 1,000 Nigerian Christian pilgrims at the Hulda Steps on the southern wall of the Temple Mount.

According to an announcement from the Ministry of Tourism, a choir of 15 Catholic priests singing Hebrew songs and accompanied by violins will kick off the gathering this Tuesday, March 18--two days before Purim.

Now I have nothing against Nigerian pilgrims--they're here by the busload this winter, dressed in colorful robes, buying up cheap tchatchkes from grateful Arab merchants in the Old City and providing business for everyone from bus companies to hotels. And yes, I know that more than 60 percent of tourists to Israel are Christians these days, but still, what does it say about us that we're so willing to glibly hand over the opening salvo in our 60th independence celebrations to non-Jews?

If their participation were part of a larger celebration that emphasized Israel's unique place in the world as the only Jewish state--of course we can welcome them as a part of the event— but this is only them!

Balint is a freelance writer and commentator based in Jerusalem

SAN DIEGO JEWISH WORLD THE WEEK IN REVIEW

Sunday, March 16, 2008 (Vol. 2, No. 65)

Peter Garas in Canberra, Australia: Some people are rude and others are RUDE
Donald H. Harrison in Ramona, California: Getting lost may become too great a luxury
Rabbi Baruch Lederman in San Diego: An impromptu memorial service on a bus
Ira Sharkansky in Jerusalem: Is Mahmoud Abbas 'a Dead Man Walking?'


Friday-Saturday, March 14-15, 2008 (Vol. 2, No. 64)

Carol Davis in Carlsbad, California: Dancing at Lughnasa: An Irish 'Fiddler'?
Peter Garas in Canberra, Australia: Skypes! Now long-lost cousins can get back in touch easily, join in family web log
Yvonne Greenberg in La Jolla, California: Rafi Malkiel: cantor's son likes folk, jazz, Latino, Afro, Israeli; in fact world music
Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: The Purim Chef: Queen Esther in an apron
Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal in San Diego: Amaleks, Hamans still pursuing us Jews

Thursday, March 13, 2008 (Vol. 2, No. 63)

Peter Garas in Canberra, Australia: Genetic manipulation may be required
to deal with a world gone out of control
Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: Cook-off aids Mexican cancer victims
Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: The Mist (a poem)


Wednesday, March 12, 2008 (Vol. 2,No. 62)

Cynthia Citron in Los Angeles: Old Times explores vagaries of memory
Garry Fabian in Melbourne:
*A standing ovation for Natan Sharansky
*Jewish counterbalance in Archibald Prize contest
*Reception for Israeli embassy official
*Jews silenced at Canberra talk-fest
*School buildings declared safe
*CBD Minyan ends after decade
*Netzer gets kids to eat their greens
*Pro-Palestinian groups to target Parliamentary motion
*Staunch advocate for Jewish schools retires 
Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: Jews have impacted the life of Republican presidential candidate John McCain
Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: Immigrants who don't respect host culture threaten national identty

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 (Vol. 2, No. 61)

Shoshana Bryen in Washington, D.C.: National borders ignored by terrorists
Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: PBS explores forgiveness; can the Jewish community ever forgive Germany?
Lloyd Levy in London: Will Jewish woes in UK spread to US?
J. Zel Lurie in Delray Beach, Florida: Hillary in 2008 and Barack in 2016
Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: City Ballet of San Diego records a milestone


Link to previous editions

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