this:
http://www.jodiverse.com/img/hamentaschen.jpg
is an Oz-nay Ha-man (or Haman's Ears)
We make them, buy them and eat them. We give them out as special gifts to friends and soldiers and strangers.
In my family, it would never look like the picture. We do whole wheat flour and date filling, not white Martha Stewart flakey pastry with prune filling. Ours will be devoured before we get a chance to offer them to others - because our family digs this once a year traditional cookie/cake thing.
There are other tales.
The heroine is Esther - chosen to be queen by the king for her good
looks.
She takes what she's given and manages to save the lives of the Jewish population of Persia through cunning and skill. She gets the King's advisor, Haman, to show his true colours to the King at a banquet she's organized.
The King sentences Haman to death for plotting to murder the Jews. It's a miracle both that evil was punished and that a woman had some say.
In short, we celebrate. And, as Jimboloco, pointed out to me, the tradition is to get so drunk as to be unable to differentiate between the bad guy and the good guy, Mordecai, Esther's uncle.
We also are supposed to dress up and ourselves go unrecognized.
That's the basic story. It starts Thursday night.
http://copland.udel.edu/stu-org/chabad/ ... 3_1311.jpg
