Yvette Miller

dr miller welcome to the show and happy purim to you happy purim thank you thank you so much for joining us um and i know that you're so busy with the holiday everything going on so purim is a day that is it's so fun filled it's so all over the place you're running and going and we do things all the time and sometimes we just don't realize the the history the meaning behind the things we do so we have foods we've got customs let me begin by asking you what is your favorite food or custom about purim well food is such an important part of purim um we give mishloch gifts of food to our friends and then of course we have a sudan purim a big festive meal to celebrate the day and i think like a lot of people um my favorite purim food is hamentashen i brought i've already started baking and uh there are a lot of different fillings in hamantaschen obviously uh my favorite uh that's what these are is um is poppy seed a lot of people think that hamantaschen um uh is is called hamantashen just because it recalls hamad i know a lot of people say that the uh the triangular shape of a hamantashen reminds them of haman's hat um in yiddish actually hamantashen means hummon's pockets so a long time ago uh we made fun of him on you know in that way um and there's also another reason we have this cookie uh hamantash and to celebrate purim in yiddish man which means pakistan sounds a lot like hamad so there was that pun as well when people first started making hamantaschen in europe there's a lot of food symbolism on purim um some of it has to do with destroying hamad you know like when you go to uh shul on purim and you listen to the megillah megillah esther that tells the story of purim every time we hear haman's name we all say boo or we wave groggers to blot out his name so there's a tension there on one hand we have to remember haman obviously um he was a descendant of the tribe of amalek and it's a it's a biblical um uh mitzvah a commandment to always remember how cruel they were um how they tried to destroy the jewish people so we can never forget but at the same time we also do want to sort of blot out his name so when we eat something that is named after haman like a hamantasan like his pocket or his hat it's sort of uh it's sort of a way of destroying him interesting um some other no interesting how i just love that i'll tell you why it's so jewish to be like hey how are we gonna deliver him let's just eat it like you know say like no don't stomp don't destroy no no don't do that i have a better idea consume it and make it fattening like i just love so much of what you said speaks to me on so many levels that like we are taking matters into our hands through our stomachs like that's the i love that i love that so true it's so jewish to eat nice foods um i have a couple other really kind of unusual um less known ways that we kind of destroy haman and our food um svardi jews might know this i this is my very first effort ever making this oh my gosh i've never i'm sorry i've never seen that okay this is this is meant to look like come on it's good it gets real close i gotta tell you okay this this is a sparty it's it's farty it's a bread it's called okay has a ladino name which is the language that the the sparty jews spoke comes from spanish um it's called ojos de haman the eyes of haman and i mean i guess the idea is that you eat the eyes first it's so but um i used a really nice collar recipe for this and i tasted the bread and it it tastes really sweet and good so again there's like consumed you want no chance yeah you want to make it sweet um that's so cool you know that's probably more in the world of svarad of spain that world as opposed to the world of the middle east um either but it's a fascinating very similar you know custom that and i've never even heard of before that's so cool well i have i have a couple others um um a lot of the starting jews went to the balkans to southeastern europe and uh there they um made their own uh purim pastry now again i tried baking it this is my first attempt so it might look a little messy um it's called a fulari a fula all right it's basically um holiday very sweet and inside um is is a hard-boiled egg it's it's a little bit like the ojos dejaman with the eggs is is the egg well inside uh-huh okay i got it a little bit inside isn't inside is an egg there he is that the egg is supposed to burn it's it's like he's it's like he's in jail it's like we locked him up in jail wow so again that's kind of a sweet treat and when we eat it it's it's you know kind of like saying oh we're getting rid of come on wow um there's another reason that these kinds of foods um are eaten and it's kind of a deeper meaning um again it has to do with food symbolism so not only do we we want to like destroy something with the name haman but um a lot of porn food is is um has a dough pocket like if you look at a hamantaschen there's that sweet filling inside but you can only see a little bit it's really covered with dough there's another um common kind of porn food craplock i i brought a couple samples that we're going to have on our purim souda now these are little pieces of meat covered in dough um they're very delicious and um they are eaten on uh traditionally three jewish holidays it's traditional to eat craplock i mean anytime you want because they're delicious um but they're really customary on yom kippur on hashanah and on purim now these are the three days in the jewish year when we say that we're sort of judged on yom kippur uh god judges us you know what kind of a year are we going to have are we going to be inscribed for a good year or you know god forbid for a bad year uh hashana rabbah is the last day of sukkot and uh it's sort of the end of that whole rosh hashanah yom kippur season and we say that hoshanah rabbah is really our last chance to sort of repent and do chuva and you know be sealed in the book of life for a for a good year then the third jewish holiday that we crept on traditionally is purim um again on porn we were we were judged you know the jewish people were going to be destroyed uh in ancient persia and uh and god intervened and we say vane fohu and all of a sudden just in the blink of an eye uh everything got turned around um hold on you're going to edit this right um [Music] so um so in in the blink of an eye and a hazoku everything got turned around now at the time uh during the time of purim um the jews didn't realize what was what was happening um this was the first holiday that took place outside of the land of israel and uh there were a series of miracles in the story of purim but it wasn't like what we were used to it wasn't like say the miracle of the holiday of shiva where we all stood at mount sinai and we all heard i am god you know and it was like a really obvious miracle the story of purim um had miracles but they looked like a series of of coincidences at the time yeah it was a coincidence that esther was chosen to be queen of persia and it was a coincidence that mordecai happened to overhear people plotting to kill the king and and then he became an advisor in the palace and the whole story of porn really took place over lots and lots of years and it was only afterwards that the jews could look back and say aha god was present but he was hidden and we call that hysterical his literally his face was hidden god was there he was helping us but we didn't really see it so overtly at the time so that's another reason that a lot of purim foods um contain something that's hidden like the poppy seed and a hamantaschen these days of judgment um it's because there's a sort of symbolic idea that um we can be there's a sort of symbolic idea that when we eat meat we're being a little cruel a little cruel to the animal um we're allowed to eat meat but there's a certain sort of uh hardness in eating meat um so on a holiday where we're judged we want to conceal the meat in a dough you know which really is it's vegetarian dough comes from you know wheat and it's it's much more nurturing that reflects the the the nurturing or kind side of life and that's what we want god to be reminded of when we're being judged i thank you there's another tradition on purim to eat beans lentils i have an example of a bean dish here it's verdi bean dish that we're going to have on our purim tsuda um and that's because when she was queen of um of persia there's a jewish custom or when she was queen of persia queen esther uh concealed again there's that word concealed she hid the fact that she was jewish um mordechai told her yes go become queen of persia but do not tell anyone what people you belong to and she hid her jewish identity for years but she never really gave up on who she was queen esther had seven different servants one for every day of the week and that way she always knew she could keep track of which day was shabbat she never lost track even though she had no calendar there in the palace and she was a vegetarian when she was in the palace so she did not have to eat any meat that was not kosher um and she really just subsisted on on beans and lentils so in queen esther's honor it's very traditional to eat beans and lentils to recall to recall her devotion incredible um then there's one last uh food item i have here um it's traditional uh to have a purim souda a pouring meal it's very festive and uh to have challah um now i i don't know how this worked out this was an experiment of mine um sometimes people try to make special challahs for for porn because it's a fun holiday and you try to you know dress up and and do unusual things it was worked out a little messy um i put poppy seeds man in my challah again that were called you know haman and it's also really sweet and delicious and uh and i braided it and then i i made it into a circle so i think i think it's a bit messy some people say that um another really nice reason to have uh hala on purim is um if you braid it hopefully a little neater than i braided it um it looks a little bit like a rope and that reminds us also of the rope that haman wanted to hang mordechai on and and of course it recalls how that plan was thwarted and uh you know luckily mordechai survived and triumphed amazing well dr miller thank you so much for bringing such um wisdom and thought to the things that we take for granted and i know no matter who is watching this their udes will be enhanced because of your words i think i'm going to go out and make some new foods with my wife and add some new stuff to our our our table um and and i appreciate your insights and i wish you a happy probe and thank you so much for being on the show happy purim thank you bye-bye poor himself