(Jewish Group) The strange and violent history of the ordinary grogger
Some objects look like they have stories to tell, but the grogger never seemed as though it was one of them. A single photograph convinced me I was wrong, though. You’ll be forgiven if you think it is a photo of two men dressed up in hazmat suits for Purim —how were you supposed to know that those aren’t groggers, but World War II gas alarms issued by the Royal Air Force, and that the hazmat suits and gas masks are all too real?
Now that you know, your eyes (like mine) might still play tricks on you. The photo has the feel of an optical illusion: You can know what it is, yet it looks like it must be something else.
Today you can go a lifetime without ever seeing a grogger outside of the Purim context, but this wasn’t always the case. Three hundred years ago, you’d be more likely to associate groggers with the fire department than with Haman. Three hundred years before that, you’d associate the grogger with church.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been piecing together the story of the grogger in popular culture, trying to understand where it came from, how it was used and how Jews came to be its most prominent users.
Rattle and Hum: Two airmen wield gas rattles during an exercise during World War II. Image by Imperial War Museum
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