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The Quinnipiac River sparkled with the sun so bright 

Its rivulets reflecting back a quite heavenly light

Yet there are those for whom the sight of sunlight has been slight.

 

Just down the road, on Orchard Street, a synagogue you’ll see

Its armored door and gated yard reflect reality: 

For many Jews these are such times of great anxiety.

 

Inside locked doors its members pray and study ancient text

Amid moral inversion that has got them quite perplexed 

And wondering among themselves: “just what will happen next?”

 

A year and more of anxious times has come and passed away

With protests, libels, and attacks now coming when they may

And so we wonder how to greet our Purim holiday.

 

This festive celebration should be such a time of joy 

Of giving gifts and sharing laughs and fun without alloy

And now and then, a little harmless humor to deploy.

 

There’s hamentashen filled with prune or jellied apricot

There’s chocolate for the juveniles, which they like quite a lot

But for the more discerning, poppy really hits the spot.

 

But after all the pastries and the laughter and the play

Though maybe not the center, not all hidden away

I think the Purim story has a lesson for today.

 

We celebrate that story by our reading Esther’s scroll

It has a lot of twists and turns and really is quite droll

Where laughing, hissing, making noise is everybody’s goal.

 

With characters who seem to be right out of a cartoon

Like overthrown Queen Vashti who could make a eunuch swoon

Or Achashverosh, drunken king and lecherous buffoon.

 

There's Mordecai the Jew who lives in Persia’s royal court 

When servants try to kill the king he pulls their plans up short

Which gives him regal credit that old Haman tries to thwart.

 

Haman is the one for whom we make our groggers 

turn

A slimy little so-and-so whose hate for Jews does burn.

To kill us all is just the thing for which his soul does yearn.

 

But Esther is the heroin of our historic tale

To her, the task of making sure Haman would not prevail

Her lesson, then, the one of which we should ourselves avail.

 

So just what sort is Esther, who must set the whole thing right?

Is she some wonder woman who has superhuman might?

Or maybe she's a tomboy who just loves to pick a fight?

 

Is she some body builder who has perfect muscle tone?

Has she a vicious right hook that can knock old Haman prone?

Does she have halitosis bad enough to melt a stone?

 

No, Esther is an innocent, she's likely just a teen

Among the many gathered that the eunuchs clean and preen

And bring to Achashverosh as a substituted queen.

 

Who knew among the thousands that the king got to peruse

All powdered, perfumed, creamed and coiffed with intricate hairdos,

That Esther would emerge the one he’d ultimately choose?

 

Yet such is what enfolded, be it God’s plan, be it fate

That rescuing the Jews from the full force of Haman’s hate

Became the job entirely upon young Esther’s plate.

 

“I can't!” she cried emphatically when told that she must act.

“It cannot fall to me to keep the Jewish world intact!

That's way above my pay-grade and it's not in my contract!”

 

“For many weeks the king has kept his scepter sheathed from me

Unless he lets me touch it, in his presence I can't be

So I must stay away, or for my life I’ll have to flee!”

 

But Mordecai insisted, to the king Esther must go

“Perhaps you’ve gained your royal place to stand against our foe.

So render to your people the brave service that you owe!”

 

“If not, then our salvation will be coming from elsewhere 

And as for you, I doubt your life old Haman will just spare 

His kindly acts in recent days are surely very rare!”

 

We all know what next happened: Esther bottled every tear

She summoned up her courage and she put aside her fear

With great determination to the king she did appear.

 

“Oh Esther, come and walk with us,” the old king did beseech

And Achashverosh listened as to him did Esther preach

Of Haman’s plan to kill her clan, the miserable leech.

 

And that is how it happened, how back then Esther did save

Every Jew in Persia from a most untimely grave

In facing all her fears she found the strength to become brave.

 

Most years we read our story as a farce of good and bad

But in these times I’d like to shift our focus just a tad

To one of finding something that we did not know we had.

 

The Quinnipiac River to Long Island Sound it flows 

A mile away’s the synagogue, by way that fly the crows

With armored door and gated yard; today that's how it goes.

 

Inside those doors we gather, study, celebrate and pray

While on the outside we feel like it's all going astray

And wonder where will come someone who will our fears allay?

 

Salvation will not come to us bestride a gallant horse

It will not be bestowed upon us by some foreign force

No, we will have to find it hidden in a nearer source.

 

As once a fair young maiden queen discovered by-and-by

Each Jew can be a hero if we really, truly try

In each of us an Esther, or at least a Mordecai.