The Banquet of Ahasuerus, oil on canvas, painting by Aert-de-Gelder, 1680s Photo by Wikimedia Commons
By Miriam Udel
March 8, 2025
In Yiddish and English, a single word—play, or shpil—refers both to recreational enjoyment and to theatrical performance.
These two senses of shpil capture the essence of Purim, a holiday governed by the topsy-turvy spirit of reversal. Because a verse toward the end of the Scroll of Esther proclaims that Haman’s genocidal plot was overturned, the rabbis who originated the holiday made a point of embracing everything outside of the usual order. That means tipsiness over sobriety, gender-bending over the traditionally imagined binary, jest over seriousness, and irony over sincerity.
And in the realm of Yiddish letters, it has come to mean retelling the story of the megillah — often with outrageously funny distortions — in rhyming verse (gramen) rather than staid prose.
Itsik Manger (1901-1969) pioneered the fully modern, rhyming Purim shpil; his Yiddish Megile first appeared in Warsaw in 1936. After “extensive research,” he “discovered” a love triangle so spicy that the Biblical scribes had to suppress it: maiden Esther was actually in love with a socialist tailor’s apprentice with whom she had been planning to elope to Vienna — until killjoy Uncle Mordechai made her compete in King Ahasuerus’s beauty contest, where her triumph ruined everything.
Making comic use of anachronism, Manger doesn’t hesitate to transpose the trappings of Jewish Eastern Europe onto the Biblical tale and vice versa. Haman telephones his youngest son, Vayzose, the editor-in-chief of the kind of antisemitic rag that flourished in Tsarist Russia, to relay the juicy tidbit that Esther’s heartsick intended has made an attempt on the king’s life. The unsuccessful assassination, Haman wants it to be known, is a foul plot on the part of those zhides — Manger doesn’t hesitate to use the Russian antisemitic slur — who therefore deserve to be eliminated.
Manger wrote for adults, but the rhyming Purim play could be adapted for children and mixed-age audiences as well. One of the most poignant examples, Alef Kats’s Purim shpil, was published alongside another play (Gut morgn, alef, or Good Morning, Aleph) that had first appeared in 1946 and been staged in Displaced Persons camps in Germany. His Purim script hews closely to tradition, with each of seven scenes (today we might call them acts) focusing on a different character or event in the biblical story.
But Kats frames his rhymes with a prologue and an epilogue set at a postwar Purim feast, where the family’s connection to the deep Jewish past is underscored by the names of the grandchildren present: Esterke and Motele, diminutives for Esther and Mordecai.
The zeyde, or grandfather, voices the epilogue, which is a kind of pep talk for the youngest generation. “We were all in the lion’s mouth,” he declares, urging the children to see a modern miracle in the survival of a remnant of European Jewry. “After the wound of the six million,” he tells them, there’s no time to waste. In sync with the core educational message put forward in Yiddish schools and the associated children’s literature in the wake of the destruction, the zeyde calls for his descendants to live proudly as Jews, nourishing themselves with traditions like the Purim shpil.
Scene One, translated here, imagines the ancient Persian King, Ahasuerus, as a drunken, bloated fool who’s an easy mark for evil plotting because he hires out others to do his thinking for him.
Scene One
“Ahasuerus was a foolish king.” (Tractate Megillah)
Ahasuerus (sitting on his throne, half drunk)
My name’s hard to say…can’t explain, not embarrassed
My name’s Aha-ha-hard! Aha-ha-hasueres
They call me a Drunkard King, touched in the head
All ‘cause my nose — er, my crown, is quite red.
But I’m no one’s fool — I expect your obeisance!
It’s just that I’ve no head for thought…I mean patience!
So I charter some Wise Men to do all my thinking
While from water to wine, thence to beer, goes my drinking!
(shouting) Wise Men! Where are you? I need a new thought!
So get in here quick, make one up on the spot!
(Seven Wise Men enter)
Wise Men
(to the King) Here we are now, Your Highness, just as you desired
Ready to think for as long as required
(to the audience) Our heads are full to the brim with our thinking
Just as the King runneth over with drinking….
We’ll give him advice, that gink, er, the King
Should a bit come to pass, what a beautiful thing!
Ahasuerus
Stop jabbering, hush now; quit chatter and laughter
You see, don’t you Wise Men, I’m saying I’m after
A drink… no, a think!
You’d gorge if I let you, you’re all spoiled rotten
But I tell you, I want — ugh, what was it? Forgotten!
(He thinks, rubs his forehead, closes his eyes, dozes off. The Wise Men stand there awhile, regarding the King. Then they dance around the throne and sing, at first softly, and then louder and louder.)
Wise Men
Oy, Lord of Misrule
A drunk is a fool!
He’s a souse:
Must carouse
’Cause he’s a fool
He’s a souse:
Must carouse
’Cause he’s a fool
As Purim approaches, I often find myself thinking about a Talmudic discussion (Megillah 18b) of what it means to pay attention during the reading of the megillah. As we listen to the ancient words, are we allowed to undertake other, potentially distracting cognitive tasks, like interpretation or annotation? The rabbis conclude that it depends on our intentions. If we allow our minds to wander, we haven’t fulfilled the obligation to hear the megillah recited. But an act of interpretation can actually enhance our attention to the tale: call it outrageous mindfulness. There’s nothing like a snappy, satisfying rhyme to get under my skin and help me focus on the story’s twists and turns — ancient and modern. Any resemblance to tyrants past, present, or future…well, that’s just as the rabbis intended.
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