Iranian writer upset over showing “VeggieTales” cartoon about the Purim story (Plus: Was Esther green?)

 

 

The children’s TV series VeggieTales once adopted the Book of Esther for children.

The video, “Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen,” never mentions Jews.

 

This show is available on an Iranian streaming service, and this upset the Iranian Revolutionary Guard :

On July 15^th, Iran’s Fars News Agency, which is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), published an article stating that “a Zionist hero has infiltrated our streaming services.” The author was referring to the VeggieTales movie “Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen.”

The animated film is broadcast both on Iranian streaming service Filimo and through the streaming outlets of an organization directly linked to Supreme Leader Khamenei. Despite it’s connections to Khamenei and his government, the journalist calls out VeggieTales’ representation of Esther for painting Persians as the antagonists. The journalist interprets the film’s presentation of Haman as a statement about Iran.

“This is a historical fabrication that can easily mold the mind of a child,” writes the journalist. “Such a mind would be more amenable toward accepting Zionist conceptions, Judaism, and occupation of the land of Palestine.”

As an aside, I was going to make a joke about how VeggieTales chose to represent Esther as the famous Talmudic interpretation (Megillah 13a) that says that Esther was green (“yerakroket.”) But Wikipedia, of all places, has a really interesting explanation of that Gemara:

To the Rabbis, Esther was one of the most beautiful women ever created.^[2] Another source says Esther was yerakroket, often translated as "greenish";^[3] but as classical Greek used the word chloros ("green") to refer to honey-like yellow and to human skin as well as what we call green,^[4] the rabbis who lived in a Greek-influenced context may have intended that Esther's skin was a normal shade of yellow.

This site  goes through the various types of “green” mentioned in the Talmud and refers to a commentary by the 11th century Rabbeinu Chananel who says that “yarok” could refer to the color of an egg-yolk or to reddish-gold, and concludes that that Esther, described as “yerakoroket,” was a blonde. But gold colored skin could easily be considered beautiful as well.