History rarely arranges itself according to the Jewish calendar. Empires rise and fall without consulting our parshiot. Wars are not scheduled around our festivals. The world’s great powers do not wait for our liturgy before making their moves.

And yet, from time to time, history and Torah seem to speak to one another.

On the Shabbat before Purim, as Jewish communities across the world stood to hear Parshat Zachor — the Torah’s command to remember Amalek — news broke that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been killed in coordinated strikes that dismantled the leadership of a regime that had, for decades, openly called for Israel’s destruction.

The timing felt almost biblical.

Parshat Zachor is brief, but its words reverberate across the centuries:

“Zachor et asher asah lecha Amalek.”

“Remember what Amalek did to YOU.”

The Torah addresses the Jewish people in the singular — lecha, to you. Not to you as a collection of individuals, nor to you as competing factions, but to you as one.

Because Jewish survival has always depended on this paradox: we are a people of immense diversity, yet at decisive moments we must see ourselves as a single moral entity.

Amalek attacked the stragglers, the weary,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)