Spoilers for a 2500 year old text I guess

It has not been a terrifically busy week, but by far the highlight was Sashay, Oy Vey! A Drag Brunch Megillah Reading.

Join Auntie Semitism and Femmeschewitz for a glamorous retelling of one of our classic problematic faves, the Book of Esther. The Book so messy you have to put her in a cab at 4am after she makes out with your girlfriend in the club bathroom. Come for the mitzvah, stay for the mimosas.

They read the whole book, which was a first for me. I didn't know a lot of Jewish folks growing up in a modest town 50 miles outside Seattle so I haven't been to many Purim parties. Whether the complete reading was a testament to the leftist Jewish groups being larger in Montréal (a "deeper bench" as my partner put it) or a preference of the organizers is unknown to me, but it's clearly a lot more work.

The highlights:

1. A last minute substitute reader that veered between Biblical, Talmudic, and Aramaic translations to produce a very creative if unhinged interpretation of the sexual preferences of most of the characters.
2. A funny and rather explicit demonstration on how to eat a hamantashen, the traditional prune-filled Purim pastry that has a suggestive resemblance to a number of other things.

3. How the extremely problematic last two chapters were handled.

Absolutely zero people at this explicitly anti-Zionist Purim event failed to appreciate the relevance of the last chapters to current events.

For those unfamiliar - spoilers for a 2500 year old text I guess - having managed to thwart an attempted genocide (a sadly common theme in many Jewish celebrations) the two Jewish characters empowered by the Persian king to engage in wholesale mass murder of their real or imagined enemies (Wikipedia):

The previous decree against the Jewish people could not be nullified, so the King allows Mordecai and Esther to write another decree as they wish. They decree that Jewish people may preemptively kill those thought to pose a lethal risk. As a result, on 13 Adar, 500 attackers and 10 of Haman's sons are killed in Shushan. Throughout the empire 75,000 of the Jewish peoples' enemies are killed.^[18] On the 14th, another 300 are killed in Shushan.

In stark contrast to every other part of the celebration, these chapters were read without noise, fanfare, or joviality. They were read more as a solemn dirge - a lament.

But after and throughout, the practiced tradition of celebration, humor, and community in the face of an awful present persisted.

There is no good transition to a dog video but the people DEMAND IT so here: