Looking back after 50 years (gulp), Purim spoofs tell a story

Let’s face it, long before this year’s arrival of Purim, the holiday of v’nehafechu — opposites, inversions and ironies — the world already has turned upside-down and topsy-turvy.

Examples abound. The leader of the world’s first and greatest democracy is defying the Constitution, and making nice to America’s most dangerous enemy. The Mideast’s only democracy, savagely attacked by a terrorist group committed to eradicating it, is accused of genocide, while many students at our elite universities seem more inclined to sympathize with those who pledge to destroy the Jewish people.

In Israel, one segment of the population has reached a new level of chutzpah, refusing to send its sons into the army and threatening to bring down the government in the midst of a brutal war unless it gets more funding for its yeshivas.

I could go on but you get the point. These are dark days.

Yes, Purim is the happiest day on the Jewish calendar, a time for merriment, including Purim Torah and spiels filled with inside jokes and puns often based on Talmudic texts. And yes, I know that if Jews held back from celebrating Purim fully at times of crisis in our long history, we might never commemorate the day. In truth, I have been a vocal and consistent advocate of celebrating the merry Purim tradition, marking it by publicly poking fun at sacred (kosher) cows and attempting satire to make some serious points.

In fact, this is the 50th year since I started writing and publishing a Purim Spoof in the Baltimore Jewish Times in 1975, the first of its kind in Jewish newspapers in the US. It generated some head-scratching (“is this for real?), lots of flak (with letters that tended to begin, “I have an excellent sense of humor, but I was not amused by…”) and some actual laughter, I’m told.

The only year during my tenure at The Jewish Week that we didn’t publish a Purim Spoof was in 1996, when, in the days leading up to Purim, five suicide bombings – three in Jerusalem (including a No. 18 bus), one in Tel Aviv and one in Ashkelon – murdered 62 Israelis. (Hamas claimed responsibility for all of the bombings.) Purim celebrations were canceled throughout the country.

This year feels to me like another time to pause and hold back on satirizing current events for three reasons. First, because the deep trauma that has been with Israel and its supporters since October 7, 2023, is still raw and ongoing. Second, the explosion of antisemitism here in the US and in many other countries has made us acutely aware of how vulnerable we are in ways we thought unimaginable until now. And third, and more practically, at a time when “fake news” is everywhere and America’s president makes statements that seem hard to believe — turning Gaza into the Riviera, buying Greenland, etc. – how can a satirist out-Trump him?

Rather than try, I offer up a few samples from past Purim Spoofs so readers can reflect on how humor in our culture has changed while many of the issues — and key figures — in the news over several decades haven’t.

Looking back on early Spoofs, I’m amazed at how wildly inappropriate some of the humor was, like about ethnicity and gender, and the fact that we received virtually no negative feedback. For instance, there was an “ad” for a bargain-priced, three-day, six-night trip to Poland where Day One was set aside for the pilot to “ask directions.”

The kicker is that two readers called our office for more information about booking the trip.

Over the years, Orthodox rituals and community were heavily over-represented as a topic in the Spoofs, in part because most of the handful of Spoof team contributors were, like me, the product of Orthodox homes and customs themselves. It’s also true that observant Jews are more familiar with the playfulness of the holiday. Pranks, plays and parodies are welcomed even in the most serious yeshivas, and imitating one’s rebbe in a skit is fair game and part of the celebration.

On the other hand, more secular Jews and our local and national communal organizations were less inclined to be good-natured about being tweaked.

As for the topics that kept popping up, US-Israel relations, hot and cold, was high on the list, as were Arab-Israel tensions and constant concerns about Iran. Bibi Netanyahu, who has served longer than any other Israeli prime minister, was an almost constant presence — and target.

Baltimore, 1970s and ‘80s:

When I introduced a Spoof section on my first Purim at the Baltimore Jewish Times, the response was probably more confusion than laughter among readers. To be sure, every page was prominently labeled “Purim Spoof” with taglines like “Just Kidding” and “Guaranteed To Offend,” but invariably there were those who took us seriously.

‘Fast’ Times at the JCC

Baltimore has a large Orthodox community, and for many years its Jewish Community Center was the only one in the country closed on Shabbat. As the Jewish population moved further north, a second JCC was built in the suburbs. When it was about to open, there was a communal debate about whether it would be open or closed on Shabbat.

In our Spoof, we had a news story announcing that the new facility would open on Yom Kippur with a light dairy repast. It did not go over well. Our office phones were ringing with irate readers complaining about the insensitivity of JCC officials.

We had much to atone for that year…

(In the end, the decision was made to make the grounds available on Shabbat but have the building closed.)

Ranking Jewish Education

One year we published an “ad” from the local Jewish federation asserting “JEWISH EDUCATION IS OUR SECOND BIGGEST PRIORITY.”

Underneath, in small type, the tag line read: “Everything else is Number One.”

The powers that be were not amused, though I did get a call from a Federation exec who told me he thought it was funny. Off the record.

The Trouble With Harry

The most prominent philanthropist in Baltimore back in the day was Harry Weinberg, a real estate mogul who, because he owned so much property in Hawaii, was sometimes referred to as Honolulu Harry.

Many Jewish institutions in the US and Israel have benefited from his generosity, but there was a time in his later years when Federation officials dealt cautiously with him because of his moody disposition. When we ran an item in the Spoof one year with the photo of a prominent Federation official, saying he was starring in a new show, “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” the official called me in distress, fearful that Weinberg might see it “and leave all his money to the Mormons.”

The ‘Cosmokun’ Kerfluffle

One of my favorite Woody Allen lines was his noting that if two intellectual journals, Dissent and Commentary, were to merge, the result would be Dissentary. That led me to consider what kind of topics would be covered in a merger of Cosmopolitan, Helen Gurley Brown’s popular, brassy women’s magazine, and Tikkun, a serious liberal Jewish journal.

For a Purim Spoof in 1991, we announced the merger that created “Cosmokun,” defined as “to mend, repair and transform the world, or at least your thighs.”

The cover photo was of a classic Cosmo girl, with the headline: “Cleavage and The Jewish Problem.” Among the stories touted on the cover were “The ‘90s Politics of Racial Identity, Rabbinical Responsibility and Tight Pantyhose” and “Beyond The Green Hemline.”

A number of women, including some working at Tikkun, found the spoof sexist and chauvinist and were deeply offended. So when its editor and publisher, the late Michael Lerner, suggested to his staff that they run our mock Purim Spoof for comment in an issue on political correctness, there was quite a backlash.

He decided to run it anyway “to deflate some of the pretense of the progressive movement,” he told James Warren, who wrote a Media Watch column for the Chicago Tribune on the controversy. “Sometimes a good laugh can be the best weapon in building progressive social change,” Learner said, and asked readers to weigh in.

The next issue of Tikkun ran several Letters on the subject, pro and con. Lerner had anticipated a “hefty number of negative responses,” Warren wrote, concluding: “So far about 50 letters have arrived and the overwhelming reaction, Lerner says, is the same: ‘Lighten up, guys, this is funny.’”

MEMORABLE HEADLINES OVER THE YEARS..

ISRAELI POLICE ARREST WOMEN FOR PRAYING AT WALL STREET DIVISION UJA DINNER

RABBI CONFESSES: ‘MEN AND WOMEN SLEEP TOGETHER DURING MY SERMON’

KOLEL STUDENTS GO ON STRIKE … threaten to work if demands not met

TIGER WOODS: ‘BOGEY MAN LOVES HIS NIBLICK’

BILL CLINTON TO HEAD AMIT WOMEN… agreed because he thought it was ‘I meet women’

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH TO DIVEST FROM MORALITY

ACCUSED RABBIS TO LAUNCH OVERNIGHT CAMP FOR GIRLS… Motto: ‘We put the ‘reach’ in outreach’

CHASIDIM FAVOR SAME-SECTS MARRIAGE

ARAFAT PLAN HAILED, ISRAEL TO KEEP PART OF TEL AVIV (1999)

SHUL CANDYMEN TRADE BLOWS… injured man in mint condition

HUSBAND GETS ‘GET’ AFTER WIFE DATES 100 RABBIS

Bibi and Obama in 2012: Twelve years later Israel and Iran were having direct confrontations.

BEST-SELLING BOOK: ‘FRIDAY THE RABBI SHOOK HIS LULAV’

ORTHODOX RABBIS TO ‘TAKE A KNEE’ AT YOM KIPPUR SERVICE … ‘But just for Alenu, not Hatikvah,’ they explain (2018)

ACRONYMS ALL THE RAGE (LOL) … AOC and MBS support BDS, blast ADL and ZOA on CNN

GAS PRICES ARE SO HIGH, EVEN LIBERAL JEWS ARE WALKING TO SHUL

BIDEN FILMS AD PROMOTING MEDICAL ALERT FOR SENIORS… President shown prone on Oval Office floor appealing to voters: ‘I’ve fallen … in the polls and I can’t get up… without your help’ (2022)

Charedi Newspaper’s Tribute To Leading Rebbetzins

Proud women leaders (Not shown from left to right): Faigie Bluma Cohen, Rochel Leah Gold, Chana Dina Blum, Miriam Devora Green and Rivka Malka Stein. Also not shown, Sura Leah Rosenberg, who was unable to attend.

Now and Then: An article posted last week recalls a classic Purim Spoof, with unintentional irony:

Legendary laughter….Readers were warned: The masthead reads: ‘One Look and You’ll Agree This Is Definitely NOT THE JEWISH PRESS…The Largest Circulation of Any Anglo-Jewish Parody in the World.’

A well-written and timely feature sent out just this past week by JNS ( Jewish News Syndicate), a national news agency, described the challenge of Jewish media coming up with satirical Purim editions in 2025, at a time when fake news is so prevalent.

In reviewing the history of these Purim spoof efforts over the years, the author made reference to an iconic 24-page mock edition in 1979 of The Jewish Press – titled Not The Jewish Press, put out by a small group of witty contributors. But the author mistakenly thought The Jewish Press was parodying itself.

“While The Jewish press tailored its satire for its mostly Orthodox audience,” the JNS story said, “it didn’t hesitate to poke fun (‘Yeshiva boy suffocates in polyester suit’ read one headline.)”

But far from poking fun of itself, The Jewish Press denounced the parody and its creators, and reportedly threatened legal action soon after the mock edition came out on New York newsstands and sold 30,000 copies.

Decades later, the message is still the same: “Lighten up, this is funny.”

A Serious Note of Thanks…

My key partner in these Spoofs has been Meish Goldish, a mild-mannered author of many books for children who has a wicked sense of humor, a genius for Jewish puns — (‘Bridget Jones Is Dairy,’ ‘The Kallah Purple,’ ‘Honey, I Shrunk The Yids,’ etc.) — and is responsible for the great majority of Movie and Broadway titles and Want Ads that have been a popular fixture in our Spoofs. We first teamed up in 1974, when the skit we helped write and perform at our shul’s Purim party resulted in the rabbi walking out in a huff. Not our fault.

We plan to continue working together … in the Witness Protection Program.

The staffs at the Baltimore Jewish Times and The Jewish Week often chipped in with clever ideas, and artistic feats of fantasy came from art designers Kim Muller-Thym and Dan Bocchino.

A shout-out to the talented, ongoing contributors to The Jewish Weak, which included Tzvi Bernstein, Adam Dickter, Michael Feldstein, Isaac Galena, Seth Galena, David “Beryl” Phillips, Julie Wiener and Alan Zwiebel. We would meet one night a year, a few weeks before Purim, and come up with some great material, though much of it – after our hours-long, hilarious writing sessions – never saw the light of day. Too risque. Too edgy. Too mean. But so funny.

Thanks to all for the memories and the laughter. May we soon laugh again with a full heart. CHAG SAMEACH AND HAPPY PURIM TO ALL