I write these words on Motzaei Shabbos after a Shabbos unlike most others.
Throughout the day, sirens sounded again and again across Israel. Families rose from their Shabbos tables, zemiros stopped mid-song, and once more we made the now-familiar walk toward stairwells and bomb shelters. Doors closed behind us. Phones remained silent. Information was scarce. We sensed that something serious was unfolding—likely connected to Iran—but in truth, we did not know what was happening.
Some people were frightened. Others were deeply unsettled. Yet most of us did what Israelis have learned, through long and difficult experience, to do. We gathered our families, walked calmly to safety, and placed ourselves in the hands of the Ribbono Shel Olam.
As Shabbos observers, we were careful not even to ask those who might have heard the news for updates. We chose, consciously, to live with uncertainty rather than compromise the sanctity of Shabbos. And so we sat together without information, without analysis, without reassurance—sustained only by faith that Hashem watches over His people even when events remain hidden from human understanding.
Earlier that morning, we stood in shul listening to the reading of Parshas Zachor, the Torah’s command never to forget Amalek—the embodiment of cruelty without conscience, hatred without moral restraint, evil that cannot be negotiated with or redeemed. Those ancient words felt unusually close as sirens interrupted the rhythm of tefillah and sent us toward shelter. We were thinking about the obligation to confront irredeemable evil even as we lived through a moment when evil felt very near.
Only after Shabbos ended did the picture begin to emerge. Reports began circulating of major military action undertaken against one of the most dangerous regimes threatening Israel and the Jewish people. Early indications suggested extraordinary success—achieved at a moment of grave danger and, strikingly, just in time for Purim.
One detail especially caught my attention: the reported name of the operation—Sha’agat HaAri, “the Roar of the Lion.”
The name was so close to the title of the classic halachic work Sha’agas Aryeh that I found myself reaching for the Sefer almost instinctively—not because I expected it to “predict” history, but because Torah is where Jews go to make meaning when events feel too large to hold in the mind. I did not find a ready-made line that “explained” what we were living through. What I did find was the enduring comfort of Torah’s warmth after fear, and the quiet work of seeking language that allows a Jew to stand within uncertainty without being overtaken by it.
That return led me back to Purim.
Purim is the festival of salvation discovered in retrospect. G-d’s Name does not appear explicitly in Megillat Esther. Events look like random, natural, political machinations. The story unfolds through palace intrigue, human decisions, and remarkable turns of fortune. For much of the narrative, the Jewish people live inside uncertainty. Only afterward does a pattern emerge; only afterward do we realize that what looked random was guided, that what looked like vulnerability was the beginning of redemption.
We make our way into shelters without knowing how the story ends—and only later discover that deliverance may already have begun.
Purim, in other words, is not only about being saved. It is about coming to recognize salvation—about learning, sometimes after the fact, that Hashem was there all along.
Rav Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin describes Purim as the emergence of light, specifically from within concealment—or mitoch ha-hester. Unlike the open miracles of Yetzias Mitzrayim, Purim’s redemption is experienced first as hiddenness, and only later as clarity. First comes the night, then the day.
This Shabbos felt like that night.
We moved to shelters repeatedly without knowing what was happening beyond the walls. We did not have the comfort of explanations. We had only tefillah, Tehillim, and a quiet inner decision: to live inside the uncertainty without letting it break us, to trust that the One Who guards Israel does not sleep.
And then came Motzaei Shabbos—the beginning of “daylight.”
As details began to emerge, the same hours that had been filled with fear began to look different. What had felt like chaos began to appear as a purposeful act of protection. What had felt like helplessness began to appear as the removal of a longstanding threat. Nothing about our experience during Shabbos had changed—only our understanding of it.
That is the Purim pattern.
We live through moments before we understand them. We pray before we know outcomes. We make our way into shelters without knowing how the story ends—and only later discover that deliverance may already have begun.
As we approach Purim—and soon afterward Pesach, the festival of revealed redemption—we pray that the frightening moments of our own time will be seen, clearly and unmistakably, as steps toward security, peace, and a deeper awareness of Hashem’s guiding hand in history.
May we merit not only protection, but clarity; not only survival, but the ability to look back and recognize how darkness itself contained the seeds of light.
לַיְּהוּדִים הָיְתָה אוֹרָה וְשִׂמְחָה וְשָׂשֹׂן וִיקָר
So may it be for us—leading ever closer to the coming of Mashiach and the complete Geulah, speedily in our days.
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