Wile E. Coyote and Haman
If you are anything like me (and for your sake I hope you are not!), you oftentimes find yourself pondering some of the greatest mysteries in life. While my mind has wandered down many paths of thought, there are some questions and mysteries which I come back to more often than others. Some examples of this are “Who really killed JFK?” “Do extra-terrestrial creatures exist?” “How exactly did Teddy Roosevelt’s glasses stay on his face if they had no temples?” and, of course, “Why did Wile E. Coyote hate the Road Runner so much?”
In case you are not familiar with Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, they are the two antagonists in a popular Looney Toons cartoon in which the coyote (“Wile E.”) is constantly trying to kill the roadrunner (“Road Runner”). He uses various outlandish contraptions, almost always a product of the “Acme” company. to achieve his aims but inevitably these same contraptions fail and end up wreaking their havoc on him instead of the Road Runner.
The question I began this essay with is, why exactly did Wile E. hate the Road Runner? What did the Road Runner ever do to him to incite this visceral hatred and unbending determination to kill him? Was there some history between the two that the coyote is trying to exact revenge for? While we are on the subject, it behooves us to ask some other important questions related to this literary gem such as, why, when the coyote runs off of a cliff does he not actually fall down to the ground far below until he looks down? Do the laws of gravity not kick in until one looks down and is aware that they are standing in the air?
Another question that begs an answer is why did the coyote keep on buying his products from the Acme Company when the quality of their products was inferior to the worst toy you may have ever bought from the dollar store? By the way, the record for us for “worst quality toy” was when I bought my kids a toy at a dollar store and it broke as my son took it out of the wrapper immediately after we paid – right there in the store. True story.
I have given this topic much thought and I have come to the following theory. Ready for it? Here it is. The Road Runner was Jewish!!! This would explain Wile E. Coyote’s obsession with killing the Road Runner! Think about it. The Road Runner is the classic Jew, not looking to bother anyone. He just moves around the world minding his own business, doing nothing to bother anyone other than constantly saying “Meep Meep!” and, in a display of classic anti-Semitism, the coyote is determined to do away with the Jew. (That’s my theory and I’m sticking with it. If you have a better one, you can write your own Ramble.)
We Jews have always been the prototypical Road Runners, the difference being instead of saying “Meep Meep” we say “Oy Vey!”). We inhabit different countries and try to innocently go about our way, practicing our faith in a way that is harmless to the host nations where we reside. In the meantime, the various nations of the world throughout history want to destroy us.
There has never been a good or even a consistent rationale by the other nations to explain the phenomena of anti-Semitism. At times the persecutors claimed the Jews are too insular, other times we were told “the Jews are too assimilated with us.” Sometimes they allege, “The Jews are too rich and control the money,” while other times they said “The Jews are too poor and are parasites living off of us.”
In truth, anti-Semitism is rooted in none of the above. While it is a topic that is too long for this essay and deserves an entire class of its own, the Torah teaches us that anti-Semitism has, and always will, exist until the arrival of the Messiah. The self-serving justifications of the nations may change but the common denominator of hatred will consistently be there. At times it will manifest itself overtly, other times it may lie dormant beneath the surface waiting for an opportunity to break through, but it is always there.
The arch-nemesis of the Jewish people has historically been the nation of Amalek. This nation, more than any other, harbors a deep-rooted hatred for the Jews more so than any other.
In just a few days we will celebrate the holiday of Purim, the most joyous day on the Jewish calendar. The antagonist of the Purim story was a wicked man named Haman, a man who wanted nothing else in the world as much as he wanted to destroy the Jews. Not just to inflict a wound upon us but to completely annihilate and destroy us.
As we read the story we see how many of the very same methods which Haman tried to use against us were actually used against him! For example, Haman constructed a gallows that was 100 feet high in order to hang the leader of the Jews, Mordechai. In the end, Haman was not only unsuccessful in killing Mordechai (and the rest of the Jewish nation) but he was himself hanged. And wouldn’t you know it? He was hanged on the very same gallows that he himself built in order to hang Mordechai! Many other examples of this occur throughout the Purim story.
Put another way, Haman was the original Wile E. Coyote, building his Acme-produced 100 foot gallows and Mordechai and the Jews were the original Road Runners, “oy vey”ing our way through our daily lives, when Haman – completely unprovoked – decided to kill us. In the end, much the same as always happened to Wile E. Coyote, his own contraption was ultimately what he met his untimely demise upon.
No wonder Purim is such a joyous day!
Unfortunately, like Wile E. Coyote rising from the cloud of dust at the bottom of a deep canyon or from the ashes of being blown to smithereens by a case of Acme dynamite, our enemies throughout history never really die. Sure, their names, countries, languages, and cultures constantly change but the goal has always remained the same. There will always be enemies seeking our destruction.
One of the greatest messages of Purim is G-d instructing us not to worry! We can keep going about our lives, doing our thing, with the knowledge that He is always watching and protecting us. We can’t be assured that there will always be an outcome identical to the Purim story but we can rest easy knowing that the coyote will never succeed in vanquishing the Roadrunner!
And for that I say “L’chaim!” (Meep Meep!)
Stay tuned for my next ramble when I discuss why it is that Lois Lane couldn’t recognize Superman simply because he put on a pair of glasses and a cape. I mean, seriously? He looks exactly the same!
Until then, happy Purim and Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yosef Koval
