Saturday Morning D’var Torah – Parashat Tetzaveh (Shabbat
Zachor) 5772
Last year, right before Purim, I felt it was my duty to warn
you about something horrific happening in our community. Unfortunately, no
changes have happened since last year, so I feel a need to repeat myself, which
I hate doing. A need to repeat myself, which I hate doing…
As you know, recently I’ve started promoting better eating
habits, better choices of quality food, and a healthier approach to consumption
in general, here at Ohev Shalom. Well, this issue which I would like to present
to you this morning flies DIRECTLY in the face of this new campaign of ours.
Last year, I spoke to you about the dangers of one particular food: Poppy-seed
Hamentaschen, better known as Muhn. Even the name is gross… Yuck!
I don’t want to go into too much detail, but basically,
before last Purim I told everyone to STOP eating Muhn Hamentaschen. In short,
they’re the worst. Why?
o
First, they get stuck in your teeth, which looks disgusting.
o
Second, they grow poppies in Afghanistan to make a drug called ‘opium,’
so when you eat Muhn Hamentaschen, you’re basically supporting terrorism. I
hope you're happy...
o
Third, if you eat too many and then go driving and get stopped by the
police, you could test positive for drug use, again, because of the poppies!!
o
And fourth, did you ever see the movie, “Wizard of Oz”? Well the Wicked
Witch used poppies in the field to put Dorothy and her friends to sleep,
because poppy is also an ancient sedative, so by eating Muhn Hamentaschen,
you’re basically saying that you’re friends with the Wicked Witch. Shame on all
of you!!
Now I don’t want to go on too long about Muhn, because
instead I would like to move on to another scourge in our community, another
evil food ruining everything that is good and pleasant and holy. This, ladies
and gentlemen, is the second installment in my annual Pre-Purim sermon series,
which I am calling “Munch n’ Burn!: Foods that Corrupt and Destroy.” You
'munch,' and I BURN with disappointment...
MACAROONS! The silent, but deadly, killer. ‘What’s wrong
with my macaroons,’ you say? ‘How could anything so small and tasty be
terrible?’ Well, first of all, they’re not tasty. You are mistaken, if
you think so! Also, did you know they were made with coconut??? NO ONE likes
coconut! I know, I’ve asked around. I asked myself, I can’t stand coconut… and
who else really matters?
For those of you who are already on board, I applaud you.
Good job. Stay away from wicked-coconut and nefarious-macaroons, and tell your
friends. But if you’re one of those weirdos who still thinks coconut tastes
good, and macaroons ain’t that bad, everyone’s doin’ ‘em, what’s the harm?
Well, listen up!
Evil #1 – History. According to many historians, an Italian
baker invented the cookies in medieval times. The name comes from a Neapolitan
word, maccarone, which means “fine paste.” (By the way, macaroons don’t exactly
look like a ‘fine paste’ to me, so they're ALREADY deceptive with that fake
name. Unbelievable…) During the Renaissance, the recipe found its way to France
(by way of Catherine DeMedici’s chef), where the cookies became immensely
popular.
So the macaroon comes from Medieval Italy and France, BOTH
places that were terribly anti-Semitic in medieval times. When you eat
macaroons, you are supporting people who hated Jews several hundred years ago.
Nice, really nice…
Evil #2 – Coconut oil. It is filled with saturated fat,
which is bad. The Food and Drug Administration warns AGAINST use of coconut oil
in cooking. Now some crazy people say, ‘no, no, not all fat is bad. Some
tropical cultures have used coconut oil for centuries, and they do ok.’ Well,
it just so happens that most coconut oil in stores is hydrogenated, which means
trans fat, which everyone agrees IS bad! Take that!! (Yeah, that’s right, I did
my homework…)
Evil #3 – Some strange people like to eat macaroons on
Passover, because a lot of ‘traditional’ desserts are off limits. Well, coconut
flakes look an awful lot like rice to me, if you think about. …And maybe if you
squint. And rice, according to Ashkenazi tradition, is NOT permitted on
Passover. So somehow we’ve allowed coconut to sneak its way into our Pesach
food, even though it looks suspiciously like another food that some people
irrationally forbid on the holiday. Very sneaky, those macaroons. Not to
mention the fact that they come in like a thousand different flavors - Vanilla, Chocolate, Rocky Road, Almond,
Cookies and Cream, Wasabi (probably, I don’t care) – which means that they
‘pretend’ to be something else. You think you’re eating something WITHOUT
coconut, because it says ‘Rocky Road,’ and then you have a very unpleasant
realization when you bite into it. So I’m told, I'm not speaking from personal
experience…
Evil #4 – How do you open them? It’s impossible! You could
try a hammer, a chisel, a hacksaw, a power drill, a machete, NOTHING works! And
the whole time, that coconut is just laughing at you, mocking you for not being
able to figure it out. That’s sick…
Evil #5 – Coconut milk! Well, actually I can’t say anything
bad about coconut milk, I actually kind of like the stuff. It’s a good
alternative to dairy milk, and it’s particularly good in Thai food, especially
Thai curries. But sometimes the food is TOO spicy. Even when you ask them to
make it milder, it STILL comes out too spicy, and I blame the coconut milk! So
THAT’S Evil #5; poor temperature control and bad customer service!
Evil #6 – Even the Marx brothers movie, “The Cocoanuts” from
1929 isn’t one of their best. At all. It was their first, sure, but so what?
One reviewer on IMDB said,” The story is flimsy and the supporting cast is
awful.” That’s tragic! They made so many fabulous films, but the one named
after this awful nut/fruit had a review that included the word ‘awful.’ The
coconut just ruins everything…
I hope that you have now begun to realize the sinister type
of mind we are dealing with here. You think you’re just chowing down on an
innocent cookie, when really it is A) Filled with coconut… yuck, B)
‘pretending’ to be Kosher for Passover, when who really knows? C) silently, but
deliberately filling you with trans fats, in gross violation of the advice of
the FDA, and D) making you think ‘oh, I could make one of these, it’s easy,’
when really it’s much tougher than it looks, the recipe is confusing, the
flavors never come out right, and you always burn the whole batch… or so I’m
told. Again, I’m not speaking from personal experience or anything…
We NEED to be much more vigilant about the foods we eat.
This weekend is Shabbat Zachor, and we already talked about how the Maftir and
the Haftarah remind us to wipe out Amalek, the ancestor of Haman. Well, the
Hebrew word for coconut is ‘kokos.’ And the numerical value of ‘kokos’ is
exactly the same numerical value as ‘Amalek.’ EXACTLY THE SAME!! (Well,
actually they’re off by 32, one was 272 and the other 240, but it was actually
A LOT closer than I expected when I first planned to make that joke…) But the
point is, coconut is the new Amalek, and we need to wipe it out, just get rid
of it altogether. Like Muhn Hamentaschen, coconut is the worst.
So take care, everyone. There are dangers all around us.
This Purim, STAY AWAY from the Muhn Hamentaschen, and later, during Pesach,
avoid, AT ALL COSTS, any and all macaroons that try to approach you or sneak up
on you. Because it WILL happen… And remember, the purpose of this Munch n’ Burn
sermon series is to protect you and to protect our community. It is definitely
NOT meant as Purim Torah, as fake, humorous sermons right before the holiday of
Purim. Not that at all. Just making sure we were clear on that, so there are no
misunderstandings.
Shabbat Shalom, and Chag Purim Sameach!
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