No one wanted to be Haman
at the Purim carnival,
sniveling villain who would separate
Jews’ heads from necks
if steadfast Mordechai
and his courageous cousin Esther
hadn’t saved the day.
All the girls wanted to be Esther, ’natch,
mothers’ nightgowns sashed with silk
over our short-sleeved leotards,
rhinestone ear clips pinching flesh,
cardboard crowns looped under our ponytails.
The boys dressed up as King Ahasuerus,
striding down the temple’s halls
with proclamations of beneficence,
waving scepter broomsticks
wrapped in tin foil.
The point is,
nobody wanted to be the bad guy,
the one who people feared and hissed,
who whispered “murder” into royal ears
before the voices of compassion
drowned out bigotry to teach the lesson:
we are all the same.
Which brings me to our current
costume ball of hate-filled pageantry,
gragers spun by crowds in keen encouragement
of every mocking swipe, each cruel incitement
to eliminate the foreigner-
anyone whose race, religion, skin tone
makes us feel ill at ease and doubt
our clear superiority.
Maybe it’s time to reimagine Sunday school,
when we all dressed up as heroes
and booed evil ones together,
when we studied what the difference was
between the dark and light.
