HOW MANY HAMANS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHT BULB?

It’s Adar, the month of joy and happiness.  So this week, we begin with a joke.  How many fishermen does it take to change a lightbulb?  The answer:  Only one, but you should have seen the size of that lightbulb, it was unbelievable.

Beginning this Wednesday evening, March 4, we celebrate the holiday of Purim. Purim is a wild and happy holiday, with the reading of the biblical melodramatic Book of Esther, the invitation to actually make noise in synagogue with each mention of Haman’s name, the free exchange of gifts to family and friends, and the noshing on all sorts of candies and hamantaschen.  Given all that, it may seem strange to preface this holiday with a Shabbat dedicated to remembering Israel’s most dreaded enemy:  Amalek.  But this Shabbat is Shabbat Zakhor, the Sabbath of Remembering, the Shabbat when we are enjoined to remember what Amalek did to us during our 40 year trek in the wilderness, quote, “how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear” (Deuteronomy 25:18) unquote.
 

The connection between this Torah portion and the holiday of Purim is that Amalek is presumed to be the ancestor of Haman.  But something deeper is going on here.  We are supposed to remember what Amalek did to us.  Well, what did Amalek do to us?  Amalek surprised us, cut us down, and took advantage of the weak and weary among us.  That, according to the Torah, but I ask again—what did Amalek do to us?  Did Amalek make us bitter and withdrawn, or did the Amalek experience change us in some other way?   The Torah is asking us to remember much more than the trauma of Amalek’s viciousness.
 

All this is a little eerie.  How can we remember that which we weren’t present to experience?  But here, too, the Torah challenges us spiritually.  We weren’t there?  We haven’t experienced Amalek?  My friends, there is an Amalek in every generation, launching attacks on our sanity, dignity, and humanity.  This should not surprise us.  What should surprise us, what should delight us is the resilience of the human spirit to bounce back, to rise higher than any of the low lives who would turn this world into a living hell.  Our sacred Jewish mythologies teach us that happiness is far stronger than hatred, and that love of God will eventually displace the racists and the bigots, the tyrants and the dictators, all the people who like Amalek, live “undeterred by fear of God.”   How do we remember what Amalek did to us?  We remember what happened, we give ourselves a few days to reflect, and then we gather to celebrate with great joy and happiness our refusal to let the Amaleks define for us what it means to be a decent or loving human being.
 

How many Hamans does it take to change a lightbulb?

Decent human beings change lightbulbs.  Hamans live in darkness.