A Zachor to Remember

My mind is abuzz after the last 48 hours, and I feel the need to decompress the news and process extraordinary history being made this very moment.

Even as the tension mounted in Israel over the past couple of months awaiting yet another imminent attack from Iran, nothing quite prepares you for that singular moment when the air-raid siren goes off, and you sweep your 16 month-old child into your arms in order to run to safety.

Shabbat morning, between sirens, we walked briskly to a community minyan which uses a school as its venue and has a bomb shelter on the basement level.  This week, Jews around the world read from parshat Zachor, the Torah portion commanding us to remember and wipe out Amalek, a nation bent on the destruction of the Jewish people. When sirens resounded again, the minyan brought the Torah scroll into the bomb shelter already filled with other people from the neighborhood- young and old, religious and secular. Four readings of the same verses were conducted consecutively in varied cantillations, a reminder of customs evolving throughout the millennia due to Jews being exiled by vast empires and kingdoms, and then scattered throughout the world.

On the eve of Purim- a holiday celebrating an incredible turn of events when Queen Esther, a Persian Jew, saves the Jews of Persia from total annihilation at the hands of Haman, the King’s chief advisor and a vengeful anti-Semite- current affairs couldn’t be more aligned. After 47 years of Ali Khamenei calling for the death of America and Israel, and oppressing 90 million of his own Iranian subjects, the ruthless tyrant and his collaborators have been served by the “Roaring Lion”.

The perfect confluence and timing of parshat Zachor; commanding us to blot out the existence of Amalek while the Israeli Airforce executed operations with surgical precision 2000 kilometers away is not lost on any of us.  The elimination of the Ayatollah Khamenei and his 40 higher-ups is the Purim story revived, interlaced and woven perfectly into a tale that would otherwise be difficult to pass as non-fiction.

ליהודים היתה אורה ושמחה וששון ויקר