Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim, which celebrates the triumph of Queen Esther over the wicked royal councillor Haman. In our Institute class, we’ve been studying the “villains of the scriptures”, and it seemed fitting to discuss that story this week.
One of the traditions of the holiday is to make little treats called hamantaschen, which means “Haman’s pockets”. They’re delicious little cookies shaped like triangles (the pockets, I guess) with fruit in the center:
Recipes for them abound on the internet, so I found one and went to work.
Notice how nice those look on my pan! Beautiful little triangles with fruity centers! But after baking, they looked terrible.
The dough completely collapsed, and they looked like pathetic little biscuits with a dollop of strawberry jam. I dubbed them hamantraschen.
That said, they still tasted fine. We brought them to our classes, and everyone seemed to enjoy the snack.
Oh, and another Jewish tradition on Purim is to dress in costume. We thought we’d do that, so I was Haman (or rather, a generic villain, complete with a top hat, cane, and dastardly mustache). Pepper was the beautiful Queen Esther.
And yes, we taught class in costume.
Learning about the Purim customs made our otherwise mundane lesson much more fun!