Children Celebrate Purim Miracle with Hamantaschen

When a recipe moved over the wire for hamantashen — triangular, fruit-filled cookies associated with the Jewish holiday of Purim — it took me back five years to a particularly festive day of a 10-day trip to Israel.

The itinerary called for us to spend that early-March day getting to know the city of Tiberias, our base for exploring the Galilee region before moving on to Jerusalem. It was the last day the city’s children would be in school before the joyous holiday that began at sundown March 3 that year. As we saw the sights of the lakeside town, we were caught up in the smiles and laughter of the kids celebrating in advance, bedecked in costumes on their way home. The scene could have been mistaken for Halloween trick-or-treat in the U.S., except that none of the costumes was deathly or sinister — all just fun.

Later, at the hotel, we got a taste of the hamantashen — pastries named for Haman, the bad guy whose plans are thwarted in the holiday’s salvation story. Though their name literally translates to “Haman’s pockets,” the cookies’ three-pointed shape alludes to the villain’s tri-cornered hat or, in an alternate interpretation, his ears.

Like the kids in Tiberias in 2007, the children of Chabad Lubavitch of Greater Daytona this year got an early start in celebration of Purim. Sunday morning, they dressed as characters as diverse as Minnie Mouse and Mordecai — a hero in the holiday narrative — and made hamantashen.

Rabbi Shmuel Konikov, youth program director for Ormond Beach-based Orthodox Jewish congregation, said the cookies — whose filling is largely hidden under the pastry flaps — and the costumes both reflect one of the themes of Purim: divinity in disguise.

“Part of the reason we celebrate the holiday is to always remember there is a super divine power in the world that is always looking out for us,” Rabbi Konikov said. Often, though, that power is concealed in what appears to be a natural course, he said. “Nature itself is divine.”

Purim commemorates a string of events in which the Jewish people are delivered from an almost-certain annihilation engineered by Haman, prime minister to a king in the ancient Persian Empire. The story is too complex to be fully relayed here. Let’s just say Haman and his plan come to an end after the king finds out that Queen Esther — who became his wife by winning a beauty pageant she didn’t willingly enter — is Jewish. Mordecai, a Jewish community leader who is related to the queen, plays a role in her intercession with the king. The king appoints him to replace Haman.

Food and drink are integral to the celebration of Purim in ways beyond the hamantashen. Baskets of food — much of it homemade baked goods — traditionally are given for the holiday. Adults are encouraged to drink wine, by some accounts “until they can’t tell the difference between the phrases ‘cursed be Haman’ and ‘blessed be Mordecai.’ ” And, of course, there’s a holiday feast.

However, no food so clearly says “Purim” like those pastry pockets. The ones served at the hotel in Tiberias had prune filling. The aforementioned wire recipe calls for poppy seed, another traditional option. Any flavor, though, will do for the spirit of the holiday.

“It reminds us of the wicked Haman, the adviser to the king,” Rabbi Konikov said. “All that’s left of him is jelly cookies.”