Mrs. Lester's Orange Dessert
A Purim story for children ages 8-12, from any background.
“I was 10,” said Nana to Rachel, “and my sister, your Grand-Aunt Sarah, was seven the day we learned about the very, very important mitzvah of giving gifts of food on Purim. This is what happened.
“Back then, most mothers stayed home with their families. They took care of their homes and families and didn’t work outside the home. My mother, your Great-Grandma Anna, helped our community, and she kept a wonderful home for my brother Dave, Sarah, and me, and of course for our dad, your Great-Grandpa Harry. One thing she did every year was help at the synagogue rummage sale.
“A rummage sale was like a giant yard sale, but it was held in the synagogue social hall. That year, she found two beautiful gowns for sale. They had probably been bridesmaids’ dresses. One was orange. It had a velvet top and yards and yards of tulle for the skirt. Sarah fell in love with that dress. The other was blue moire. That’s a shiny fabric, all one color, except that it looks kind of like ripples of water on a lake, and it makes a shusshing noise when you move. That dress had sequins and rhinestones all over. I loved it. Mom took those dresses apart and made us both Queen Esther costumes from the fabrics. My, we thought we looked wonderful.
“Dad took pictures of us, but we wanted people to see how beautiful we looked. That was when Mom looked at Dad. Together, they said, ‘Shaloch manos.’ Do you know what those are?” Nana asked.
Rachel’s face scrunched into a frown. “Uh-uh.” She shook her head from side to side.
“That’s gifts of food. Do you remember why we celebrate Purim?” asked Nana.
“Sure,” Rachel nodded. “Haman and a bunch of bad guys wanted to kill all the Jews, but Queen Esther told the king, and he killed Haman and let the Jews beat up any bad guys who bothered them.”
“That’s right,” said Nana. “So that very first year, after the Jews saved themselves and their families, Mordecai and Esther told them to celebrate by giving gifts of money to poor people, and sending food gifts to friends. Many people still do those things today. It’s like looking at Halloween through a mirror: similar but backwards. Children wear costumes and knock on doors. Instead of asking people for treats, though, they give treats to the people they visit.
“But we didn’t live in a Jewish neighborhood. Instead of going to other houses with treats while wearing costumes, we did that at the synagogue. After the Megillah was read, everyone stayed for dinner and a carnival. That was when we gave exchanged our food gifts. Usually those were hamantaschen and other cookies.
“There was just one other Jewish family in our neighborhood, as far as my parents knew. Mr. and Mrs. Lester lived on the next street. They were very old and spoke with accents from the Old Country. Mrs. Lester came to the Hadassah meetings at our house. I didn’t like her, though. She was kind of scary because she never smiled. In fact, sometimes she looked mean. Once in a while she brought us a wonderful dessert called Orange Dessert. It was like orange ice cream, but better. Mom would shake her head and say, ‘We’re not such good friends, I don’t know why she bothers.’ I loved Orange Dessert, but I still didn’t like Mrs. Lester.
“’I have an idea,’ said Mom. ‘Mrs. Lester brings us her Orange Dessert sometimes, and we’ve never given her anything back. Hannah and Sarah can take shaloch manos to the Lesters!’
“Dad thought a moment, then nodded. ‘That would be a good thing to do,’ he replied.
“I complained a lot, but my parents wouldn’t listen. So Purim morning Sarah and I put on our gorgeous costumes. Mom put some prune hamantaschen on a paper plate, then took a second and stapled it down to make a cover. These she gave to Sarah. She took another paper plate, put poppy seed hamantaschen on it, stapled a cover, and handed it to me. Then she sent us off to the Lesters’.
“When Mrs. Lester opened the door, she stared at us. ‘Vat, vat’s dis?’ she asked.
“Sarah answered, ‘It’s two kinds of hamantaschen for you because it’s Purim.’
“Mrs. Lester stared and stared. Then she covered her mouth with her hand and began to cry.
“Uh-oh, I thought. What did we do wrong? I swallowed, then said, ’I’m sorry!’
“Mrs. Lester was actually sobbing. Tears rolled down her wrinkled cheeks. Then she sniffed a big sniff. ‘Moshe, come quick,’ she called to her husband. In a moment he stood at the doorway, staring at us. Then he put his arm around Mrs. Lester and hugged her tight.
“I chewed my lip for a moment. Then I asked, ’Did we do something wrong?’
“’Nothing is wrong,’ Mr. Lester said. ‘It is right, oh, so very right.’
“’You see,” said Mrs. Lester, “This is the first time since the War with the Nazis that I have even thought about shaloch manos. My last Purim, my children dressed up and carried shaloch manos to all our neighbors. But then a few days later the Nazis came and took us all away. After that day, I never saw any of my family again.”
“’My whole family died in the war, too,’ said Mr. Lester. ‘We met after the war. We have been too sad to celebrate Purim. You have reminded us that, as we read in the Passover Haggadah, ‘In every generation people rise up to destroy us, but the Holy One, Blessed be He, delivers us from their hands.’
“Mr. Lester handed his wife his handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and took his hand. ‘It is 15 years since the war ended. It is time for us to bless God for delivering us and bringing us to this free country. Thank you for reminding us.’
“I was only ten. I didn’t really understand then. But after that, the Lesters visited us often, especially on Friday nights for Shabbat dinner. They also started going to synagogue every week. Sometimes Mrs. L., as she asked us to call her, would bake wonderful cookies and cakes in the synagogue kitchen for everyone to share after Shabbat services. And when she saw us when other people were around, she would tell the story of our shaloch manos again.
“When I was young, I hated that she kept telling the story. But when I grew up, I realized she told it because it was so important to her.
Nana went to the refrigerator and took out two of her best glass dishes. She set one in front of Rachel and took the second one for herself. “For years I couldn’t find the recipe, but yesterday it turned up. I made it, and it’s just as good as I remember,” she said.
“And now I am passing the story on to you, Rachel, along with the recipe for Mrs. Lester’s Orange Dessert. Don’t ever forget how important giving shaloch manos is. You never know when a simple gift of food can reach deeply into someone’s heart.”
Mrs. Lester’s Orange Dessert
Ingredients
1 package orange flavored jell dessert
½ cup hot water
½ cup sweet white wine
Juice of 2 oranges, strained
1 pint of vanilla ice cream, softened. Use nondairy ice cream to serve with a meat meal.
Garnish with one of the following: maraschino cherries, nuts, orange slices, mint leaves, or other etc.
Directions
Dissolve the jell dessert powder in the hot water.
Add the wine, juice, and ice cream. Beat until smooth, but don’t let the ice cream melt.
Place in small dishes or teacups in the refrigerator. Do not freeze.
Garnish as you please.
For Parents, Teachers, and Others
This is based on a true story that occurred in 1960. I was actually 14 and my sister 11 at the time. It was the first time we followed the custom of shaloch manos. In honor of two people who suffered greatly and overcame their pasts to be joyful, participating members of their community, people who have no descendants to remember them, I have used their correct last name. If I ever knew their first names, they were lost over the years. Besides Mrs. Lester’s Orange Dessert, at the end of this section I have included my favorite recipe for Hamataschen along with instructions for prune and apricot fillings.
When I was a child, we used poppy seed filling that we made at home. However, poppy seeds contain trace amounts of opium. Opium is derived from the latex sap of the same plants, not the seeds, but the use of the seeds has fallen out of favor.
As I explained in last week’s children’s story, Purim is an ancient Jewish holiday that commemorates a genocidal decree against the Jews that was overturned, so the Jewish people survived. The story is told in the Book of Esther, called in Hebrew Megillas or Megillat Esther.
Traditionally, Megillat Esther is read aloud in synagogue (or another place) from a hand-written parchment text. Sometimes it is in a scroll; often it is a “letter,” with the parchment folded rather than rolled. Some copies are illustrated with elaborate designs, some are illuminated like parchment documents from the Middle Ages; some are just the text. The Hebrew text is word-for-word the same throughout the Jewish world.
The Book of Esther that is included in the Christian Apocrypha is called the Greek Esther because it appears to have been originally written in the Greek language. It has over 100 additional verses and inserts God’s name many times. Jews do not accept these additions.[i]
Glossary
Hadassah: a Jewish women’s organization founded in 1912 to provide medical care to the Jewish and Arab residents of the Holy Land, which was under Turkish rule but utterly neglected by the rulers.
Haggadah: the book used on the Passover holiday at the seder meal. It tells the story of Passover. Traditional Haggadahs are identical around the world. Liberal Jewish groups have written many new versions that vary considerably in content and intent from the traditional version.
Hamantaschen: Haman’s hats or Haman’s pockets, these are triangular pastries, traditionally with prune or poppy seed filling but today filled with many kinds of fruits, nuts, or other fillings.
Mishloach manot: the modern Hebrew term for shaloch manos, explained below
Mitzvah: Liberal Jews translate this word as “good deed,” but the word means commandment. There are 613 mitzvot in Judaism, commandments that must be followed. Of these, 248 are positive commandments (dos) and the remaining 365 are negative commandments (don’ts). But each law is specific, and no one is obligated to all of them. Some only apply within Israel,while many depend on other factors.
Rummage sale: a sale of used goods, also called a bazaar, jumble sale, or yard sale, usually as a fundraiser for an organization.
Shaloch manos: gifts of food that are to be given on Purim. At least two different types of food are given. In some traditions, the foods should require different blessings (for wheat-based foods, tree nuts and fruits, one for seeds and vegetables, etc.) Also called mishloach manot.
Genocide and Israel
A discussion of this story is a good time to explain that the word “genocide” means a governmental or quasi-governmental killing of people because of their of ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status, or similar factors. For something to be a genocide, the characteristics of the people involved and no other factors are the cause. The killing of Germans during World War II, after the German army under Hitler invaded and took over most European countries, was not genocide. The people were not killed because they were German. They were killed because their country, seeking power, had started a war against the other countries.
In the same way, Israel did not start the war with Hamas or with the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. In the last 110 years, Arabs have been offered a state of their own many times in the territory now called Israel and the Occupied TerritoriesThey refused each time because they do not want to share land with Israel, although Jews have lived in the land for nearly 4000 years and the Arabs moved in only about 1400 years ago. Jews come from Judea; Arabs come from (Saudi) Arabia. The Hamas war started because Hamas terrorists, who have been provoking Israel since taking power in Gaza in 2006, took control of and severely damaged ten communities, killed over 1300 Israelis (Jews, Christians, Muslims), including 39 Thai workers, and took over 200 Israelis and Thai workers hostage. Israel is fighting a defensive war against genocidal Muslim extremists who have sworn to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews.
Muslim extremists are also waging war against non-Muslims in Nigeria, India, Ethiopia, and other places around the world. They believe that their god commanded them to kill all non-Muslims who will not convert to Islam. Their killings are truly genocide: they want to kill everyone who does not worship their god, regardless of what those people did or didn’t do.
Purim teaches us that God is in control, even when we cannot see Him. Worry tends to usurp reason: the more worried we are, the worse our decisions tend to be. When someone has faith that God, not themselves, is in control, they can relax and think clearly even in difficult times. This lesson, I believe, is relevant to all people in all times.
Hamantaschen Cookie Recipe
Basic Hamantaschen Recipe (London, A., and Bishov, B.K., The Complete American-Jewish Cookbook, The World Publishing Company, © 1952)
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
½ c. butter or shortening, or 6 Tbsp. mild cooking oil
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 Tbsp. milk or water
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Mix and sift the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cream together the fat and sugar. Add egg. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk or water. Add vanilla. Roll out to ¼-inch thickness. Cut into 2 inch rounds. Drop a teaspoon of filling in the middle of each round and draw up the sides to form a triangle. Bake in 375 degree (F) oven until lightly browned, about 45 minutes.
Prune or Apricot Filling (recipe by the author)
1 pound pitted prunes or dried apricots
2 tsp. lemon juice
Grated rind of 1 lemon
Options:
Prunes: add a 2-3 inch stick of cinnamon while cooking; discard before processing.
Apricots: add 1/8 tsp. of powdered ginger or a pinch of nutmeg while cooking.
Soak the fruit several hours or overnight. Cook in the soaking water, with optional spices if using, until soft. Stir frequently to prevent burning. Discard the cinnamon stick if used. Drain the fruit but reserve the liquid. Put in a food processor and process until smooth, adding cooking liquid if needed. Add the lemon juice and rind, process briefly to combine.
[i] Solomon, M., Cancel Megillat Esther? Not Now, Not Ever. Mizrachi World Movement, https://mizrachi.org/hamizrachi/cancel-megillat-esther-not-now-not-ever/ , accessed March 20, 2024.
Hanna, this is just amazing 👏 😍 this would make an amazing book!