This year, to celebrate Purim, the Hey Alma staff hosted our very first virtual watch party. What did we decide to watch together? The VeggieTales Purim episode, obviously!
Our team of four — half of whom had never seen VeggieTales and half of whom watched this episode annually throughout their childhoods — gathered with a group of Hey Alma readers on Discord to watch, discuss and yes of course question this 40-minute cinematic masterpiece.
If you haven’t watched “Esther, the Girl Who Became Queen” yet, I invite you to give yourself that gift right now, then come back here and join me in parsing out what the heck you just saw. To be clear: I LOVED IT. But I do have a lot of questions.
Questions I Have After Watching the VeggieTales Purim Episode for the First Time:
1. Do VeggieTales characters put veggies on their sandwiches and if yes, is that cannibalism?
2. What kind of vegetable is Esther?
3. What kind of vegetable is Mordecai?
4. What kind of vegetable is Haman?
5. Wait was Mordecai Esther’s cousin? I thought he was her uncle?
6. Is Mordecai a cop?
7. Where is Haman’s triangle hat?
8. How many times will they say “oy” during this episode?
9. Can someone explain why Esther has giant shoulder pads but no arms in this dress?
10. Are they really not going to say the word “Jews” even once?
11. Why is the tiara floating?
12. Who is Larry? (My fellow Hey Alma staff members assure me that “Larry is the OG” and also “Larry is an experience.” All I know is there was a lot of talk about Larry in the Discord chat and I had no idea who he was and frankly I still don’t!)
13. If all the veggies have real names are we supposed to believe this episode is them acting in a Purim spiel?
14. “Why’s there a piano on my cake?”
15. Why is Haman’s antisemitic song about a “sneaky family” with “sneaky noses” so unfortunately catchy?
16. Do non-Jewish viewers know this is about Jews / the literal story of Purim?
17. Why does Mordecai call Esther “Essie” and not “Estie”?
18. Wait why are we talking about The Jackson Five?
19. Are they eating pizza? Is pizza hamantaschen?
20. Is this the origin of Purim parades at Jewish preschools?!
21. Who was in charge of the sunset animation? (They deserve a raise!)
22. No so really, what kind of vegetable is Esther?
23. WHO PUT THE SECRET STAR OF DAVID SHADOW FROM THE SKYLIGHT ONTO THE KINGDOM FLOOR AND WHY IS IT THE ONLY ACTUAL OPAQUE REFERENCE TO JUDAISM IN THE ENTIRE EPISODE?! (Major shout out to HANNAH in our Discord channel for discovering this, screenshotting it and changing all of our lives forever.)
Happy Purim, everyone!
