(RNS) — This evening in synagogues all over the world, Jews will gather for Purim and read the scroll of Esther.
The Book of Esther calls the story an “iggeret,” which can translate to “epistle,” or a letter addressed to a specific community. It’s for generations of Jews to open again and again, whenever history turns dark.
The gaiety of Purim masks a dark story of Jewish vulnerability in ancient Persia. Purim tells us that in a world where a Judeophobic despot can call for your destruction, you must do what you need to do to survive. It is about what Jews must do when threats become real.
The American-Israeli attack on Iran occurred on Shabbat Zachor, when Jews read the commandment to remember Amalek, our ancient genocidal foe. Haman, the villain of the Purim story, descends from Amalek, a symbol of radical evil.
Ancient Persia is now contemporary Iran. In our time, its leaders have stood as close to a symbol of radical evil as one can find. For decades, they have obsessed over the destruction of Israel and, by extension, the Jewish people. Iran has hosted Holocaust denial conferences while arming those who dream of the next one. It has created an international franchise of antisemitic and anti-Western terror: Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen. It has built a ring of fire around the Jewish state.
In 1994, I stood in the rubble of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, after a terror attack killed 85 people and injured over 300. I was part of a rabbinic delegation consoling children who had lost parents and siblings. At the time, it was the deadliest terror attack in the Western Hemisphere before Oklahoma City, and before 9/11 reshaped our understanding of mass terror. Hezbollah carried out that attack on behalf of Iran.
The average American might say that was about Israel and the Jews. So is the attack on Iran. Why should they care?
Because this is not just about Israel, which Iran’s leaders have called the “little Satan.” It is also about America, which they’ve called the “great Satan.” For 444 days between 1979 to 1981, Iran held 52 Americans hostage. Then in 1983, a group later associated with Hezbollah bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American service members. The same year, it bombed the U.S. Embassy there. During the Iraq War, Iranian-backed militias used Iranian-supplied roadside bombs that killed more than 170 American troops. In 2020, Iran-backed forces launched ballistic missiles at American military bases. In recent years, its militias have fired rockets and drones at U.S. military installations.
Similarly, my friends to my left might ask: Why should we support this act of war? How does this affect my life?
You don’t have to support it, but you can understand wanting to protect human rights and stand with the oppressed.
For months, Iranians marched, some under the banner “Woman, Life, Freedom.” They were assaulted, beaten, blinded and killed. Iran has murdered protesters by the thousands. It has executed dissidents at a staggering pace. This regime beats and kills women who refused to wear the hijab. It has imprisoned journalists. It has executed gay men. We should care, and vociferously, when a regime systematically murders its own people.
You are against militarism of any sort? I get it. You have quite competently opposed the military actions of the state of Israel. But then you must oppose the regime that arms militias across the Middle East and exports repression.
When you support the weakening of a regime that murders protesters, executes dissidents, arms terror groups and openly calls for another nation’s destruction, you are not betraying your progressive values. You are defending those values.
The Iranian people deserve freedom from the regime that brutalizes them. Israelis deserve freedom from annihilationist threats. Americans deserve protection from a government that brands them the “great Satan” while plotting against their soldiers and diplomats.
And, even though Purim is a time for raucous celebration, let us not celebrate this act of war. Let us accept it, support it and understand it with solemnity — not glee.
Over the years in times like this, I have returned to the lesson of the Israeli poet Amir Gilboa, who wrote these words in 1953:
If they show me a stone and I say a stone, they will say a stone.
If they show me a tree and I say a tree they will say a tree.
But if they show me blood and I say blood they will say paint.
If they show me blood and I say blood they will say paint.
What we are seeing in Israel, in Iran and among American troops is not paint, it is blood. As I write this, nine people were killed as an Iranian missile destroyed a synagogue and damaged a bomb shelter in Beit Shemesh in central Israel. I fear there will be more such exhibits of blood.
So, when Jews go to synagogue to hear the story of Esther, what should they carry within their souls? When you blot out the name of Haman and remember Amalek, you remember what it means to confront radical evil and to refuse to be complacent. When you cheer for Esther and Mordechai, you remember what it means to take responsibility for your own fate.
May Israel act wisely and proportionately. May American, Israeli and Iranian lives be protected. May innocent Iranians one day live free of the regime that has imperiled them and others. And may we cultivate a Judaism mature enough to hold both the sword and the prayer book — knowing that one is a tragic necessity, and the other sustains eternal hope.
