The claim that French by Frenchmen is not spoken reminds me
of the hoax that Ahasuerus was a stable boy
before he ever became king, an allegation we
when reading in the Talmud texts may quite enjoy,
although it may not claim he was a stableboy. It claims
that Vashti’s grandfather’s mere stable boy could hold his liquor
far better than her husband. This amended reading shames
the royal shikker by reminding us that he was hicker
than a low status stableboy of Queen Vashti’s grandfather,
Nebuchadnezzar, Asiatic conquistador whose status
was high above her husband’s, which, it thus implies, was rather
similar to that of any stable horse’s flatus.
Amending versions of the texts….. ingenious way to end a hoax!
No hoax that French is spoken by the French, but Esther
inspired many hoaxes, nearly all of them quite harmless jokes,
such as the anal analogue suggested by this jester.
The textual emendation of bMegillah 12b on which this poem is based was inspired by an article in a seforim blog by Yaakov Jaffe (“No, Achashverosh never served as a stable-boy”).
Gershon Hepner
Purim 5781
Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.
