‘A Hard Night’s Megillah’ brings The Beatles to the Book of Esther in Rabbi Myers’ farewell spiel

For more than four decades, Rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers has made a ritual of reinvention, crafting Purim spiels that spoof the biggest names in popular culture with music and wit.

While “A Hard Night’s Megillah” — a Beatles parody that will be performed on March 2 at Rodef Shalom Congregation at 7 p.m. — will not necessarily be Myers’ final spiel, it will be the last one he showcases in Pittsburgh. Myers, who has served Tree of Life Congregation since 2017, will be leaving his pulpit and moving to the New Jersey Shore this summer to be closer to family.

Myers has parodied everything from “Star Trek” to Harry Potter, but he’s particularly excited about “A Hard Night’s Megillah,” for which he’s repurposed 20 well-known Beatles’ tunes to retell the story of Esther, Mordechai, Achashverosh and the evil Haman.

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The Beatles’ discography was fertile ground for a Purim score, Myers said. Some songs didn’t even need much reworking to fit the story.

“If you remember in the Purim story, the Book of Esther, Achashevrosh holds a beauty pageant selecting the queen, and he picks Esther,” Myers said. “So, ‘When I’m Sixty-Four,’ right? Perfect song.”

Other songs — including “Eleanor Rigby,” “Yesterday” and “Yellow Submarine” — needed a bit more revising, but when it comes to spiel writing, inspiration comes naturally to Myers. An idea for a parody of Harry Potter, for example, hit him while in the sanctuary of Calvary Episcopal Church, where Tree of Life has been holding High Holiday services since 2019. (Tree of Life’s building on the corner of Shady and Wilkins avenues was closed immediately after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting on Oct. 27, 2018. Representatives from The Tree of Life, Inc. have said rebuilding will start this year and the new building will house a memorial to those who were killed, a museum, an educational center and a synagogue.)

Myers recalled sitting in Calvary’s sanctuary, “a magnificent example of Anglican Church architecture,” and thinking, “Oh my gosh. I’m in Hogwarts. And there’s Hogwarts, Harry Potter, and that was the spiel. So I was trying to not write the spiel during Rosh Hashanah services, but the inspiration was there.”

Myers brought in Calvary’s rector, the Rev. Jonathon Jensen, to perform in the spiel. And in the spirit of furthering interfaith and intercultural collaboration, when he needed a dragon, the rabbi reached out to a local Asian American Pacific Islander organization’s dance troupe, which he remembered had a great dragon costume.

“Members of the dance troupe came and brought this magnificent dragon costume and did a dragon dance,” Myers said. “So we stopped — literally stopped — the spiel in the middle, and had the dragon come on for the dragon dance, which is just so elegant and beautiful to see live right there. And there was our dragon.”

Likewise, “A Hard Night’s Megillah” will feature not only Tree of Life congregants, but some special guests as well, Myers said, including five local “important political leaders,” although he declined to name them.

Having politicians participate in the spoof, he said, fits perfectly with the Purim story for two reasons.

“Number one: The Book of Esther is about palace intrigue. It’s a political story, so who better than political leaders? Number two: It’s a way to grow that relationship that Tree of Life has with our elected leaders and to just express gratitude for their leadership and continued support for Tree of Life Congregation.”

Other special Purim guests include Myers’ son Aaron on keyboard, and Hazzan-Rabbi Penny Myers, from Buffalo, New Yok, chanting some of the Megillah before the spiel. Several area clergy members will participate as well, including Jensen, Pastor Vincent Campbell from Ebenezer Baptist Church, and the Rev. Canon Natalie Hall of Church of the Redeemer.

“I think it’s important to expose our Christian friends to what Purim is about,” Myers said. “To say, ‘Well, look, we sort of let our hair down and celebrate a bit as well and have this really fun, unusual gathering, which I would say most Gentiles have never seen.”

Hall, who, like Jensen and Campbell, has been a steadfast ally of the Jewish community, is looking forward to being part of the spiel, as Purim holds special meaning for her.

“When pastors get ordained, you get to choose your scripture texts,” she explained. “And in the Christian church, there is a Hebrew scripture, a psalm, there is a Gospel text and an epistle. And my particular Hebrew scripture text was from Esther. It was from Chapter 4, and it was probably the central piece of Esther, which is Chapter 4, verse 14.”

That passage reads: “And who knows, but perhaps you’ve come to this position for a time such as this.”

“That’s been the guiding light for all of my ministry,” Hall said. “Everything that I have done is based on what Esther communicates.”

She expressed gratitude for Myers’ contributions to the community, and said she is “grateful to join him in celebrating life and freedom.”

“It’s a gift,” she said, to participate in Tree of Life Purim’s celebration.

“I want to be part of what it means to narrate freedom, and to narrate freedom in a way that I think the Book of Esther communicates, which is, Esther is trying to figure out what it looks like to flourish in a place that she was not designed to flourish,” Hall said. “I think that’s so important for everyone here in Pittsburgh right now. You know, we’re just living in a really complex time. We’re living in a difficult time. And so I just wonder how is it that we are going to support neighbors that feel like they’re not able to flourish. I feel like the Jewish community is out in front, trying to figure out what it is to communicate, what it is to have a life when life is constantly complicated by people that want to limit your life.”

In the next few months, Myers will be leaving Pittsburgh. Dubbed “America’s rabbi” following the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, he is unsure what the future will hold for him professionally. And his feelings are “mixed” as he processes his thoughts on leaving Pittsburgh and Tree of Life.

“I’ve regularly said half-jokingly, but half-realistically, that ever since Oct. 27, Rod Serling has lived in my coat closet,” Myers said. “And because it’s the reality mixed with the unrealness all in one, and that my expectation is, I come home that last day, and Rod’s going to come out of my closet and say, ‘Jeffrey Myers, you’ve been in an extended play version of ‘The Twilight Zone.’ The episode is now concluded. You can go home.’”

But for now, the rabbi is focused on producing a special spiel, which will be free and open to the public for “an evening of fun,” and during which its audience can leave the tensions of the day behind.

“Let’s come have this moment of just joy together, because it’s healthy for us to be able to do that,” Myers said. “We all need it — not just the Jewish community — we all need moments to escape from the realities of the world and just take the time to do that.” PJC

Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.