The timing of Israel's attack on Iran was not a coincidence.
Today, the Jewish holiday of Purim, Jews across the world recall an ancient enemy from Persia, while Israel confronts a modern one in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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This is a guest essay by Bob Goldberg, who writes the newsletter, “The New Zionist Times.”
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
There is a reason Israel chose the Shabbat before Purim to strike the Iranian regime. That day is called “Shabbat Zachor” — the “Shabbat of Remembrance.” In synagogues across the world, Jews stand and hear a brief but searing passage from Deuteronomy, about Amalek.
Amalek is identified in the Hebrew Bible as the grandson of Esau and the ancestor of the Amalekites, a nomadic tribe known as the eternal enemy of the Israelites. They are characterized by their surprise attack on the weak and weary Israelites after the Exodus. In Jewish tradition, Amalek symbolizes an irrational, persistent spirit of hatred and evil.
The passage from Deuteronomy goes like this:
Remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you went out of Egypt: how he came upon you on the road and struck your rear — all the stragglers, all the beaten‑down ones — when you were weary and faint,and he did not fear God.
When the Lord your God grants you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven.
Do not forget.
This is not a suggestion. It is a binding obligation to hear the reading, to remember, and to act on that memory. The Torah demands something far more than nostalgia: political solidarity. The requirement to hear Parashat Zachor (the Zachor Torah portion), the passage about Amalek, and the requirement to hear the Megillah on Purim are not dry rituals. They are designed to activate the Jewish People as a collective body, sharpened against the enemies who seek our destruction.
Today, the Jewish holiday of Purim, is the case study. It does not merely precede Passover; it acts as a kind of live‑fire exercise for what Passover demands. This pairing is deliberate. The Scroll of Esther and the Haggadah together function as a strategic doctrine for Jewish survival and sovereignty.
The Purim story begins with Jews in Shushan (a major ancient city in modern-day Iran) who have made their peace with the empire. They keep their heads down, jockey for position, and trust that proximity to power is protection enough. They are, in modern idiom, well‑integrated.
By the end, that community has undergone a political transformation. The text records that on the very day their enemies expected to overpower them, “the opposite happened” — the Jews gained power over those who sought their destruction. They organize. They assemble in their cities. They act. No one can stand against them because fear has shifted: It now rests on those who once counted on Jewish helplessness.
What was meant to be a day of extermination becomes a day of relief; a month of mourning becomes a month of joy. The story ends not with grateful subjects thanking the king, but with a people that has discovered its capacity for collective self‑defense.
Yet — and this is crucial — they remain subjects of Persia. The victory is real, but bounded. It is Jewish power under foreign rule, not Jewish rule.
The classical Jewish commentators notice that provincial officials and courtiers suddenly “support the Jews” only once Mordechai (the central male protagonist in the Purim story, a Jewish leader who saved the Jewish People from genocide in ancient Persia) rises to power. And they stress why: because they are afraid of him. Not because they have undergone a moral awakening. Not because they have discovered the dignity of Jewish life. Because fear has changed sides.
Purim stresses the importance of exercising power to live and survive in a world that will not stop testing the limits of Jewish vulnerability.
Simhah ben Samuel of Vitry, a French scholar and disciple of the Middle Ages biblical exegete Rashi, produced the Machzor Vitry. This 11th-century work includes laws, prayers, liturgical poems, and the liturgy for the High Holiday prayers. He establishes the connection between the lessons of Purim and the Haggadah’s Zionist Drama by elevating the public reading of “Remember Amalek” on the Shabbat before Purim from custom to an obligation.
The message: You do not understand Haman (the central antagonist in the Purim story, an official in the court of the Persian empire) unless you understand Amalek. Haman is a particular man with a particular plan. Amalek is the enduring ideology: the proposition that the Jews must be erased. The requirement to hear this passage is a summons to communal solidarity.
Rabbi Simcha, the second Grand Rabbi of Peshischa (Przysucha, Poland) as well as one of the key leaders of Hasidic Judaism in Poland, later inserted: “Pour out Your wrath” into the Passover Haggadah. Those words — asking God to direct His anger at the nations that devour Jacob — are recited not in some side service, but at the heart of the Passover Seder.
The point is unmistakable: Whatever you learn on Purim about power, vulnerability, and Amalek prepares you for the journey from fate to destiny in the Haggadah. The requirement to hear Parashat Zachor and the rabbinic requirement to hear the Megillah are designed to do the same thing: Break down isolation, heighten awareness, and bind the Jewish People into a single political body capable of acting as one against the enemies who seek our destruction.
“Pour out Your wrath” insists that only after a Jewish state is established can we call upon God to join the battle against Amalek. You demand that God finish the work only after you have done your part.
Medieval Jews recited this during the Crusades. They knew exactly what it meant for Christians to hunt Jews through the streets while preaching their own redemption. “Pour out Your wrath” turned them from mere victims into plaintiffs in the court of history, insisting that justice (if it means anything) must have teeth.
The Purim story does not stand alone, but is deeply intertwined with the broader historical narrative of the Jewish People’s exile and restoration. The events of Purim are framed within the aftermath of the Jewish nation’s banishment in 586 BCE, when the Assyrians forced the people from their land. This period of exile was foretold by Jeremiah’s prophecy of seventy years, a time during which the Jewish people would remain in foreign lands, separated from their homeland and sovereignty.
The resolution of the Purim narrative sets the stage for the eventual return to the Land of Israel under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah. It is during this return that the Jewish People begin to rebuild their institutions, reestablish the Temple, renew their commitment to the Torah, and form a functioning polity. Thus, the Purim story is not only a tale of survival, but also a crucial link in the chain that leads from exile to redemption.
The Haggadah, when read carefully, assumes that redemption requires that Jews stand united and be willing to confront Amalek whenever he appears, in whatever guise.
Parshat Zachor, Megillat Esther, and the Haggadah depict Amalek as the eternal enemy of the covenant between God and Israel. The authors of the Haggadah identify Amalek as the original “anti-Zionist Jew” who is animated against the idea of a Jewish state and recruits others to join his ranks. Hence, today, Amalek exists in “anti‑Zionist” Jewish circles, in the Iranian regime, and in figures such as Tucker Carlson, Peter Beinart, and Zohran Mamdani, all of whom seek to mobilize a mob in support of the political erasure of the Jewish People.
On Shabbat Zachor, the Torah requirement to hear Parashat Zachor calls you out of apathy and into the shared memory of the enemy. On Purim, the requirement to hear the Megillah turns that memory into a communal act of political solidarity. The Haggadah is a battle plan to turn that solidarity into a victory over Amalek and the achievement of sovereignty.
As Israel’s pre-Purim attack on Iran demonstrates, the annual reading of the portion reminding us to remember Amalek is as vital today as it was in the days of the first return to Zion — declaring that, this time, the story will not end in despair and exile, but in triumph and sovereignty as warriors for Israel.
WOW! All the threads pulled together vividly. Saving for my now too young grandchildren. Chag Purim Sameach!
In Esther 8:13, the Jews are commanded to "stand for their lives" and take revenge (l’hikka-reim) against those seeking their harm, resulting in the retributive death of 75,800 enemies and Haman’s sons. Just as the Megillah mandates active self-defense and retribution while refusing plunder, like Israel is doing, Diaspora Jews today must decisively confront those spreading hate and antisemitic violence. This biblical precedent affirms that meeting existential threats with strength is essential to ensuring Jewish survival and security.