The true face of the enemies of the Jewish people today, PM Netanyahu.
I was recently asked to contribute to Grager: A Purim Ball hosted in Vancouver by the anti-Zionist, Yiddishist Jewish group Glikhlekh In Goles, which featured a night of “live music, theatre, and drag” moving inside and outside of the lines of the Megillah, the story in the ancient scroll of Esther which tells of the events that inspire the holiday. The villain of the piece is Haman, the advisor to the ancient Persian King Ahashverosh, who manipulates him into making a genocidal decree against the Jews in his Kingdom. Haman is said to be descended from Amalek, the murderous tribe who attacked ancient Israel in the desert while they were escaping slavery in Egypt. Moses later commanded Israel to destroy every member of the tribe of Amalek in revenge, a precedent cynically used by Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, to call for the genocidal destruction of Palestinians in revenge for the attack of Oct 7.
Glikhlekh in Goles asked me to contribute a poem or spoken word piece about Amalek, and I contributed the following, which I’ve since been asked to make publically available.
A Purim Poem About Amalek
So they asked me to tell you a story about Netanyahu- hey, where’s your grogger1?
Let me try that again, and because I can’t see you
I’ll trust that you’re grogging when I say Netanyahu
So they asked me to tell you a story about Amalek
I will, but I’ll begin at the beginning with Esav and Jake2
That hairy, hairy hunter and that lovable rake
You see a long time ago our Jacob stole from his brother
Fearful that what belonged to him would go to another
(It wasn’t his fault, he was listening to his mother)
Yankl said he was Esav, and stole his birthright
Leaving Esav bitter and raring to fight
And our Jacob Yaakov Yankl in quite a plight
Much later on, the two of them met
Yankl was caught like a fish in a net
Wondering if Esav had forgiven him yet
Yankl bowed down and gave his bro gifts
He made the first move to heal those deep rifts
When you bow to the other, your spirit it lifts
Esav they called a “warrior and desert thug”
Well Esav ran to his brother and gave him a hug
Yankl wept as he happily embraced the big lug
But then something happened, which the Torah laments
Between these two bros of sand dune and tent
When they almost made up, their union was rent
Esav said, “Jake, join my gang”
Jake said, “Are you sure that’s really your thang?”
“Esav said, are you ghosting me? Dang”
Yankl you see, still felt the fear
That his brother would knife him just when he drew near
And so he said he’d meet him later down in Se’ir3
But when Ya’akov went and rejoined his crew
That’s not what he and his family do
They headed to Shechem instead, in lieu
Esav, again cast out, threw his destiny elsewhere
Married a Hittite with beautiful hair
Set up their own non-Jewish lair
From their spicy content a child they make
With a nefarious name
That’s right, Amalek4
Much later Amalek the tribe attacked Israel’s weak
When in the desert they did seek
To find the promised land for the meek
Later leaders of the people angrily did say
That Israel should destroy Amalek, nay
Should kill them entire if they may
Let’s pause here, though, now to see
The seed of Amalek and Israel’s enmity:
It lies way back inside our history
Jacob did wrong to his brother by stealing
Yet Esav was willing for there to be healing
But Jacob was ruled by his fearful feelings
The path of risk and reconciliation not taken5
The whole future history of Israel was shaken
A slow growing hatred was thus awakened
Amalek’s child was Haman, that whittler
Of wood for the gallows, and some say a shitler
Was born from his loins much later, yes Hitler!6
And now in our days, a sad history has been crafted
When Jews once again our brother we’ve shafted
Then forged our own path, away we have rafted
When our brother now comes, with a kiss or with rockets
What do we find in our Torah-lined pockets?
What do we see with our open-eyed sockets?
Do we call them Amalek and fight them again
Forgetting about that time way back when
We turned our hearts away from them?
Or do we see that under Amalek’s face
Is the outline of something quite different that’s traced
The form of our brother, which we’ve erased
As long as we call them Amalek, you see
We’re doomed to repeat this sad history
In which Us and Them won’t become We.
Now one more secret I’m going to say
About something our Rabbis did wisely say
“No one can be killed for being. Amalek today”7
The Rabbis said this murderous mitzvah was dead
And should not fall on anyone’s head
No tribe today is Amalek, they said.
But that bad Jewish King, Netyanyahu the killer
Only talks to the Torah8 when he needs it as filler
For his genocidal rampage as Gaza’s godzilla.
What can we learn from these stories today?
That we should not listen to what warmongers say
Here is the secret, the only way home
Is to hug close Esav-Amalek, bone to the bone.
.
Traditionally a noisemaker- grogger- is sounded by listeners every time the name of Haman is mentioned in the story, to “erase his name” in moral disgust. I am applying this directive here to Netanyahu.
Jacob (who I also call Ya’akov here in proper Hebrew and Yankl in Yiddish) is the brother of Esav, both born to Isaac and Rebecca. Isaac is inclined to give leadership of the Jewish people to Esav, an outdoorsman and hunter, but Rebecca wishes it to be Isaac, a “simple man who lived in tents.” As the Bible describes, she gets Jacob to fool Isaac into ritually giving him Esav’s birthright of leadership instead.
After Esav and Jacob apparently reconcile, Esav invites him to travel together, but Jacob again decieves Esav and goes his own way, fearful that the reconciliation is fake or won’t hold.
Few readers of the Bible realize that Amalek is Esav’s child. The later tribe is named after their progenitor.
A story which echoes in the modern founding of Israel, when the state refused to let the Palestinian refugees come back to their homes in 1948 and attempt reconciliation and reintegration.
There is a trope in Rabbinic legend of seeing all the great anti-Semites as descendants of Amalek.
The ancient Rabbis codified it into Jewish law that no one could literally be identified as Amalek and murdered by Jews in fulfillment of the ancient revenge command. It is common for rightwing Zionists to skip over thousands of years of Jewish evolution and history and mine the Hebrew Bible for justifications for bloodymindedness and murder.
The word “Torah” or “teaching” does not just refer to the Hebrew Bible, but to all Jewish sacred literature which developed from it.
Bro goes hard in the paint, demonstrating both theological literacy and a big set of you-know-what for the ages. Chutzpah is a seriously underrated virtue my friend;)