In these difficult hours, it is clear to many that if this new conflict were to contribute not only to reducing the danger facing the Jewish State but also to opening a window of freedom for the Iranian people, who have lived under an oppressive regime for decades, it would be hard not to recognize its possible historic significance.
Yet the Book of Esther, the Megillah that we read precisely in these days of Purim, also invites us to a deeper and less triumphalistic reflection.
In the Megillah we encounter King Ahasuerus, powerful, yet misogynistic, weak, and capricious, a ruler who signs decrees of annihilation and then reverses them simply because he is swayed by whoever happens to have his ear at the moment.
First he allows himself to be persuaded by the minister Haman to exterminate the Jews. Then he allows himself to be persuaded by Queen Esther to save them. All of this simply because he is skillfully manipulated.
And since the dynamics of human power tend to resemble one another — even though no historical comparison is ever perfect — it is difficult, when reading the Megillah, not to think of certain contemporary leaders who govern through every kind of excess, driven by many things, but rarely by noble ideals. This does not prevent them, at times, from “doing some good things”, according to the well-known principle that even a broken clock is right twice a day.
And the Jews?
At the end of the book they remain where they were, in Persia, in essentially the same condition as before: always vulnerable and dependent on the mood of the ruler of the moment, then as now. For this reason, on Purim the Hallel (the collection of psalms of thanksgiving recited on all major festivals) is not recited. There is survival, but no definitive resolution.
After all, Ahasuerus ultimately decrees the salvation of the Jews — yet we have no guarantee that, in an imagined sequel to the Book of Esther, he would not again allow himself to be manipulated by a new Haman.
Clearly, if the current war were to bring an end to a criminal regime that for decades has threatened Israel’s destruction and oppressed the Iranian population, it would be a precious achievement — not because war is ever desirable, but because at times survival requires it.
And yet, even if Haman were to fall once again, the lesson of Purim remains:
There is no political messiah, no strongman who will permanently resolve the Jewish condition. There is only a story that tends to repeat itself, with changing costumes and different masks.
Perhaps this is also why Jewish tradition teaches that when all the festivals will one day cease, Purim will never cease (Midrash Mishlei 9:2).
Because Purim does not recount only an event of the past, but the persistent vulnerability of the Jewish condition. And even when wars are necessary, as sometimes happens, the Megillah reminds us that Israel’s historical fragility does not disappear by decree.