Category: Jews

You goyim may be familiar with the High Holy Days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) as well as the Popular Trash Holiday (Hanukkah), but we save the best Jew holiday for ourselves. And now that it’s over, I can reveal it: Purim. Despite the lack of publicity, Purim is absolutely fucking awesome- it has a sexy backstory, bloodshed, Iranians, funny hats, and massive drunkenness. Really, what else can you want?

The holiday’s story is told in the Book of Esther, which is the Pluto of the Bible’s solar system: unlike every other book, it’s written on a single scroll (called The Megillah), rather than the usual double. And although, like the other books, it’s read in song, it has a wholly different set of notes and tunes than any other book. Set in ancient Persia, the story starts out on the right foot with a massive nationwide drinking binge. The king, a guy named Akhashveros (I’ll call him Heshie), based in a city called Shushan, had been joining in the celebration, accompanied by a bunch of his carousing buddies.

As drunk sausage-fests tend to do, the conversation turned to pussy. Heshie was married to some fine trim, housed in the body of Queen Vashti, and to prove why she was kingworthy, he directed her to strip and show the goods to his friends. OK, so far, this sounds like a typical Glibertarians get-together, but things took a bad turn- Vashti told him that he and his friends could go fuck themselves, SHE was keeping the clothes on. As was the custom in those days when royal women disobeyed, Heshie had Vashti de-queened and then set about finding some equally fine arm candy.

He organized the Iranian equivalent of Miss Teen USA, and had all the Persian girls who scored above a 9 brought in for judgement. This presaged several reality TV shows, another case of successful Biblical prophecy. Unlike Trump, Heshie didn’t have to barge into the dressing room to catch some young female nudity, they were happy to show it off to him. It’s good to be the King.

Of all the table pussy in the room, the standout was a Jewess named Esther. Not that you could tell that she was a Jewess, given the lack of female circumcision in those days. And she would have had pubes, anyway, and Jewesses tend to be a bit forest-y down there, especially Iranian Jewesses. Heshie spotted Esther and declared, “OK, that one!” and suddenly she was Queen of Persia. This came as a pleasant surprise to her Uncle Mordechai, who had raised her. Morty thought, “This is almost as good as winning the lottery!”

With a sudden interest in the goings-on at the Court, Morty caught wind of an assassination plot against Heshie. Sensing the possibility of reward, he informed the Iranian equivalent of the Secret Service, and the guys who were plotting were arrested, read their rights, and then hanged. As a reward, Morty’s story was recorded in the Congressional Record. And that… was it. Fuck.

What’s worse, Morty pissed off Haman, the Iranian Jeff Sessions, by refusing to bow down to him. Ever the vindictive bastard Haman, who decided, “Well Morty is a Jew, these Jews are annoying fucks, let’s just kill them all.” He wheedled Heshie about this idea, and Heshie, who really didn’t give a shit one way or another, said, “Sure, Haman, kill ’em if that will get you to stop bugging me.” Haman, always the planner, decided to roll dice to pick the day that the Hamancaust would happen. The reason for this is completely mysterious, but the word for dice is “purim” so if he hadn’t done that, we would have had to name the holiday Pussy or Bunch of Guys Getting Shitfaced or something like that.

The ever-snoopy Morty found out about the planned Jewkill, and understandably freaked out. He asked Esther to talk to her hubby. “Heshie hates when he’s nagged by his bitches,” she replied, “but seeing as how this is a bit of an emergency, let me see what I can do.” She set up a dinner with Heshie and Haman, during which she said, “Heshie, isn’t this fun? Let’s do it again tomorrow and maybe, you know, bumpetta-bumpetta after?” Heshie, always the horndog, eagerly agreed. In the meantime, Haman got dissed yet again by Morty, so he arranged to have a gallows built to give Morty the Big Drop the next day.

Heshie had trouble sleeping that night, perhaps because of a boner thinking about the next night, though that’s purely my speculation based on experience. “I know,” he thought, “I’ll have the Congressional Record read to me by a manservant and if that doesn’t put me to sleep, then three Seconal wouldn’t do it, either.”  The reading began, and when the manservant got to the part about Morty saving Heshie’s life, Heshie asked, “Hey, did we end up doing anything for that guy? Cash award, Medal of Freedom, whatever?” “Nope,” was the answer.

Now, though Heshie was a horndog, he was actually a pretty decent guy. Feeling bad about this oversight, he called Haman in. “Haman,” he asked, “suppose there was someone who I wanted to reward for a great service to me, how would you do it?” Haman, being a bit groggy from being awakened by King Heshie’s whim, thought Heshie was talking about HIM and replied, “Well, dress him up like a king and lead him around on one of your horses as an honor.” Incentives in those days were apparently pretty lame, but still, when Heshie said, “Cool beans, the guy’s name is Morty, get ‘er done!” Haman could only think, “Fuuuuuuuck! This puts a crimp in my plans to hang the dude. Well, I can put it off for a day or two.”

The next evening, at Esther’s second dinner party, she told Heshie, “Haman wants to kill all the Jews, you know.” Heshie responded, “Yeah, whatevs. Are we doing the nasty tonight or what?” Esther said, “Well, that’ll be kinda hard since you’re going to kill all the Jews, and since I’m one of ’em…” “Wait, WHAT???” “Yeah, I’m a Jewess, and you told Haman to kill me and all of my relatives.” Heshie, who (unlike Justin Trudeau) was not a slow fellow, realized that this kill-the-Jews thing might not have been his best idea, then remembered that it was Haman’s idea. And with that, well, it’s always the underling who gets thrown under the chariot, so in a coincidence worthy of O Henry, Haman got hanged on the gallows he had intended for Morty. Yayyyy! Oops, not so fast, what about the Jewkill?

Heshie said, “There’s a bit of a problem. I gave the orders to kill the Jews and because of Article 3 subsection A of the King’s Rules, I can’t take that back.” With some Jewess trim hanging in the balance, Heshie came up with an inspired idea: “Hey, I can issue an order that the Jews can all be armed and kill the Iranians who are coming for them!” Actually, it was Mordechai and Esther’s idea, but one of the secrets to managing your manager is to convince him that your great idea was actually his.

So the Jews armed and killed a fuckton of Persians. If we’re to believe the Megillah, something like 76,000 of them. And that was OK because Heshie got laid.

In honor of killing a fuckton of Persians, every year (((we))) have the Purim celebration, in which (((we))) are commanded to get drunk, make a lot of noise in the synagogue, exchange gifts, get drunk, fuck, make noise, and get drunk. Oh yeah, we also eat some little triangular Danishes called Hamantashen. But really, who cares, get drunk and fuck.

This is a great holiday.

There’s an old joke about the world’s thinnest book: Great Jewish Athletes. To be fair, it’s actually the second thinnest, the thinnest being Jewish Physicists Before Einstein. In any case, since SP and I are both excited about the looming start of the new MLB season, I thought I’d kick off Jewsday Tuesday with an appreciation of the two greatest Jews to ever grace the roster of a major league baseball team. And I rate them both by their performance on the field and their delightfulness as human beings.

First, right handed pitcher Myron “Moe” Drabowsky. Moe was born in Poland, then escaped in 1938 as the Nazis were closing in (this is serious Jew-cred). His early MLB career was undistinguished, bouncing from team to team for seven years before landing at the Baltimore Orioles, just in time for the magic 1966 season. From the bullpen, he managed a 2.81 ERA, a 6-0 record, and 98 strikeouts in 96 innings pitched, a pretty impressive record. But that was nothing compared to what happened in the World Series. The Orioles were underdogs against the mighty Dodgers (this was the era of Don Drysdale, that other Jew pitcher Sandy Koufax, Maury Wills…), and started Dave McNally in Game 1. After the Orioles took a 4-1 lead, in the third inning, McNally loaded the bases with none out. Drabowsky came in, allowed only one run in that inning, and struck out 11 on his way to finishing the game with a save. At one point, he struck out six in a row.

Over the next two seasons, Moe’s ERA was under 2.00, and even after being snatched by the Royals in the expansion draft, his ERA hovered around a respectable 3.00 for the next couple of years.

OK, the dude could pitch. But that wasn’t really why he was the greatest Jewish ballplayer ever. The real reason was the hotfoot. Yes, that old gag where a flammable object (usually a matchstick) in inserted into the victim’s shoe, then set alight. When it burns down…. OUCH. Moe was the undisputed king of the hotfoot, and took every opportunity to torture any reporter or team-mate who wasn’t paying close attention to his feet. He reputedly gave hundreds of hotfoots (hotfeet?) over the course of his career. No word on whether he recited the traditional “vitzivanu l’hadlik ner” prayer. In a Baltimore Sun interview, Moe recalled, “I’d go to some discomfort to satisfy a practical joke. In Detroit, before a game, I crawled under a tarp behind the bench in the Tigers bullpen, through ants and maggots, and waited until the guys stood up for the national anthem. Then I slid my hand out, lit several matches and waited for the screams.” The pinnacle of his achievements in this domain was successfully igniting the feet of then-Commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

His oeuvre was not limited to pedal pyrolysis- he also had a fondness for unexpected snakes, using them mercilessly on snake-fearful team-mates like Charlie Lau and Luis Aparicio. The former was an elaborate prank; “Once, while Charlie was asleep in a golf cart [in the bullpen], I got this one-half-inch pipe, 20 feet long, and draped one end of it over his left shoulder,” Drabowsky once told Baltimore Sun. “In the other end, I placed a 3-foot brown snake. Five minutes later, the snake pops out the other end of the pipe just as Charlie was waking up. He went ballistic with both arms and legs moving at the same time.” His best known prank, though, was calling the bullpen phone, imitating Earl Weaver, and getting relief pitchers warming up. Weaver couldn’t figure out why this was happening, called the bullpen, and yelled, “What the FUCK are you doing, sit them down!” After a few minutes, Moe called the bullpen again, imitated Weaver, and… well, you know.

Moe was a treasure and a credit to the Jewish people.

John Lowenstein was born in 1947 in Wolf Point, MT, a difficult time and place to be a Jewish child. He played for the Orioles some years later in an odd and interesting role: platoon left fielder. Weaver skillfully alternated him with Gary Roenicke in left field, so that the combined left fielder had 37 homers and a .290 batting average (Lowenstein’s contribution was hitting .320). He was a decent fielder, fine hitter, and always useful in clutch situations; memorably, in Game 1 of the 1979 playoffs, he belted a walk-off home run in the 10th inning against the Angels. He also had a marvelous mustache, possibly inspiring John Stossel.

Fittingly, Lowenstein was also a delightful flake and jokester. He practiced his swing by destroying birthday cakes with his bat, using a fungo technique. He was popular with the press, always being a great source of quotes. “Sure I screwed up that sacrifice bunt, but look at it this way. I’m a better bunter than a billion Chinese.”

Because of his use in a platoon, he never got the accolades or attention that full time players did. Nonetheless, a Jewish ballplayer is rare enough that the Baltimore Jewish Times interviewed him about his history. He talked about going to Hebrew school, his devotion early on, his admiration for his rabbi, and the pride he took in his Bar Mitzvah. The Jewish Times was delighted and ran the interview as a feature.

When there’s Lowenstein, there’s a punchline: he actually wasn’t Jewish. He was so amused by the presumption, he improvised the entire story on the spot.

And now you know. The rest. Of the story.