Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

When I was in the eighth grade my friend Ted accosted me excitedly one morning before class. “I have a hilarious joke that I just learned,” he said. “There were two bears in a bathtub. One bear said to the other, ‘Pass the soap please’. The second bear said, ‘No soap radio’.” Ted began to laugh hysterically.

“I don’t get it”, I said.

“You don’t get it?” he responded. “No soap radio!”

Still didn’t get it.

I’m not very good at remembering jokes, but that joke I remember. In researching this piece, the phrase popped into my head, and I looked it up on the internet. According to Wikipedia, this joke became popular in the 1950s. It is a practical joke and a form of surreal or absurdist comedy. (perfect for a 13-year-olds whose lives seem absurd much of the time).  The joke is that there is no relationship between the body of the joke and the punchline. The idea is to get someone laughing at a joke they don’t understand or making fun of them for not understanding the joke. (Ted did neither. He let me in on the joke and we proceeded to try to ridicule and humiliate others).

I am thinking of this because my Rabbi made a joke at minyan yesterday that I was slow to understand. I had just finished chanting the weekday Torah reading from the Book of Deuteronomy. “How do we know from what we read in the Torah today that God invented Hamantaschen?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye. “Because when Moses reviews the wanderings and tribulations of the Israelites in the wilderness he says, ‘God subjected you to hunger and gave you Ha-man to eat, a food which neither you nor your ancestors ever knew!’” (Deuteronomy 8:3)

It’s a pun. In fact, a double pun. Ha-man, in the biblical Hebrew, means “the manna”. In context, the verse means that God sustained the Israelites with manna in the wilderness. But “Haman” is also the arch-villain of the Purim story. On Purim we eat Hamantaschen, a triangular cookie traditionally filled with poppy seeds. So, the joke is, God was the first to feed the Jewish people Haman [Taschen], a food that was new to our ancestors. (Since the events that we commemorate on Purim had yet to happen.)  

The word “Hamantaschen” is itself a play on words. “Mohn” is the Yiddish word for poppyseed. “Taschen” is German for “pockets”. “Mohntaschen” are therefore poppyseed pockets, a perfect description of this pouch of dough filled with poppyseeds. They are available all year round at Polish bakeries. It is not a great leap to understand how this desert became known as “Hu-mohn-taschen” and from there “Hamantaschen” – “Haman’s-pockets” from which Haman contributed money to the royal coffers to encourage the king to support his plan to exterminate the Jews. (Esther 3:8-10)

Of all of the possible verses to pick from this week’s Parasha, it is a bit absurd in itself to choose this verse to write about. Like “Christmas in July”, (held this year on July 25) “Purim in August” seems out of place seven weeks out from Rosh Hashanah. I hope, if anything else, it will bring a smile to your lips. I know if my friend Ted reads it, it will bring back memories. No soap, radio.  

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