Purim is upon us, and we are immersed in so many pre-holiday details.
Revisiting the megillah.
Preparing goodie bags and treats for sectors in our country that the goodies will give a lift.
Baking and preparing for a fancy feast of sorts.
Each year at Purim time, we also remind ourselves that there is evil in the world. Children come and wave their groggers to drown out the name of someone as evil as Haman, a would-be architect of Jewish genocide.
Evil is not something to be tolerated in a society. Our tradition teaches: Drown it out.
The warped argument of compassion in tolerating evil, or that evil doesn’t exist, only begets more evil, more pain, more destruction, more brutality.
Does it mean there are innocents within an evil framework? Undoubtedly. This too is part of the tragedy.
Sometimes, I wish we could stop the world, or at least press a pause button, and sort the world out. Sort out the evil. Work with people to bring about change and repair. Make people understand. Then return to a better iteration of our world.
Of course, we all have work to do within ourselves, but contending with the depravity of evil, that’s a separate category.
These days, instead of Haman, it’s Hamas. The one letter difference in the names is curious. The joke about baking “hamastaschen” is real.
But it’s not just Hamas. Look at what transpired in Syria against the Alawites.
I understand that as luck would have it, they aligned themselves with the “wrong power,” and many were cruel themselves.
Yet, on a purely human level, to see a minority attacked within its own country and by its own government is something all too familiar. The desperate cries from people whose worlds and lives are closing in on them is gut wrenching.
It echoes the Holocaust and yet again brings home the importance of Israel.
It is also a reminder of who is just beyond Israel’s border. It show us a picture of exactly what and who the IDF is fighting against in this war — and why.
Imagine if Israel had not taken out the Syrian military assets.
Imagine, if Israel had acted on the basis of some media’s optimistic take on Syria’s new leadership — not seeing it as, basically, ISIS in a Western suit— and therefore had Israel not taken the offensive in destroying the Syrian military assets . . .
Israel would have been lulled into the fantasy of possible diplomacy with this new leadership, as it was with Hamas a for a couple of years before Oct. 7, 2023. A second Oct. 7 could have been Israel’s fate.
Like the Alawites who are being so cruelly hunted down, like their corpses that now tragically line the streets, it could have been Israeli corpses again.
The Alawites’ history is complex — and cruel, too. Nonetheless, to see their destruction in so brutal a manner is horrifying. Of course there are innocent children to think of, too.
Ultimately, like the Yazidis, the Alawites were a minority.
Granted, this time it was Muslim on Muslim violence, unlike the case of the Yazidis, which was Muslim on Christian violence. But the point remains: these groups were vulnerable minorities within a greater, dominating radical Muslim rulership.
To be sure, there are different streams of Islam, and speaking globally it is not monolithic.
When I look at an example of an Islamic country like the United Arab Emirates, and the covenant of the Abraham Accords, it brings hope.
Confronting the reality of radical Islam, however, is part of confronting the evil in our world, which pursues the minorities, the vulnerable. Yazidi. Alawite.
And what do you think Israel or the Jewish People are? On the global scale — we are a minority. We too are on the radical Islamic chopping block. Sadly, we know this, though.
But do we? Each year at Purim time we need to remind ourselves. Why?
I think a part of us, or at least me, suppresses it. We feel that the hatred of the Jewish people is a passing problem. We like to think and believe the best about human nature and that humanity has evolved and grown, that primitive evil is a thing of the past. We often return to seeing the world through an optimistic lens.
Then an Oct. 7 happens.
It hits you with a force; like, well, there are people who want to slaughter you, and do.
Then you see what transpired to the Alawites and you’re like, well, perhaps the ISIS guy put on a suit and wants to change, but actually evil doesn’t change overnight.
It’s savage. It goes after minorities. Mercilessly. Barbarically.
From the time of Purim, of Haman, so much has changed, and so much has remained the same. Here we are again, living out scenes from the Purim story, the megillah.
Day in and day out, Mordechai would pace at the threshold of the palace gates. True, this enabled him to overhear the plot against King Ahasuerus, which ultimately proved to be strategic and life-saving.
A threshold is a powerful space between what is taking place inside and outside; a space of uncertainty, where things are amorphous about where you are going to or returning from. Yet, a threshold is also a precipice of sorts, on the edge of a positive possibility, even if its exact outcome is not yet clear.
Esther was locked behind the gates, deep in the palace, isolated, at the mercy of an unstable, impulsive and possibly vicious leader. We see how he instantaneously had Vashti executed.
Who is to say that Esther’s fate would be different?
Esther’s — and the Jewish people’s — fate lay in the hands of evil; of Haman, of the highest official in the court of the impulsive Ahasuerus’ Persian empire.
In the face of Haman’s evil decree, in the face of the worst taking place, Mordechai never stopped pacing at the threshold of the palace gates.
Could Esther have known he was there? Did it bring her comfort or strength?
No matter, Mordechai kept showing up. And pacing. At the gates of power.
Standing up to evil.
Visible.
Showing the Jewish people his defiance and response to an irrational evil decree of hate and violence.
Maybe, just maybe, Mordechai’s mere presence at the gate, somehow mystically brought Esther the strength she needed to survive her ordeal of isolation and terror in the palace of a lunatic leader she had to contend with.
As the brave IDF stands at the gates of Hamas’ hell, all of us in our way are Mordechai, wherever we might be in the world.Be it Denver or Central Park or Jerusalem, we continue showing up for our brothers and sisters who are captives in Hamas’ tunnels, deep and isolated underground, crying out the injustice of their fate, as it hangs in the balance.
Mordechai taught us how to stand up to evil. Undeterred, relentless. Strong in our Jewish identity.
Purim reminds us, never forget.
Confront evil wherever it may be — the gate of a palace or the shaft of a tunnel.
Our Purim this year is like an epilogue to the megillah.
© IJN 2025
