At our synagogue, we have yet to do a pirate-themed Purim spiel, inspired by Edward Kritzler’s history of Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean. (And that is a true fact.)
We also have yet to do a Spongebob-Squarepants-themed Purim spiel, inspired by the conceptual pirate-themed Purim spiel, and (conceptually) featuring (parodies of) such classic hits as “The Best Day Ever,” “The P.U.R. Song,” “The Very First Purim,” and “Mordechai’s Ripped Pants.”
(This year, our teens are doing a courtroom skit, whose climax is a parody of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”… “I see a little silhouetto of a man— With a noose! With a noose! And he’s building a gallows! Fifty-cubits-high thing, very very fright’ning me! Elohenu, Elohenu… baruch shem k’vod malchuto, malchuto… I’m just poor Mordecai; nobody loves me. He’s just a Jew from a Benjamite family. Spare him his life from this monstrosity! Easy come, easy go, will you let us go? Tefillah! No! Please do not kill the Jews— Kill the Jews! … Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy!… Oh Elohenu, Elohenu, Elohenu, let him go! The Aggagite has a devil of his own for me, for me. For me! [insert headbanging here]”)
But thanks to Brian Shamash, who (probably unintentionally) dressed up as a Jewish pirate, we can at least enjoy this silly children’s Purim song, and bask in the irony that the man whose name was blotted out forever turns out to be the antihero of the story. “And don’t forget we owe him thanks, for this jolly feast of Purim.”
-TimK