Purim is not my religious story. I am a Christian, but living in Israel it is impossible to ignore Purim’s themes. The Book of Esther describes a Jewish community in exile facing a state-backed threat of genocide inside the Persian Empire. The details belong to the Jewish people. The larger issue does not. It is about whether a people under threat has the right, will, and capacity to protect its existence.

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As Israel continues to confront both direct and indirect violence from the Iranian regime, often through proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas, the Purim narrative feels relevant to many Israelis. The connection is not only biblical. It is historical. An ancient story set in Persia sits in the background of a modern conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran. For many Jewish people, this is not symbolism. It is about the right to defend, survive, and remain sovereign in a region where those things are not guaranteed.

I experience that tension as someone who is not Jewish, but who chose to make Aliyah with my Jewish family and build a life in Israel. I also experience it as a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation.

The Chickasaw Nation’s original homeland covered what is now northern Mississippi, western Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama. In the early nineteenth century, the United States forced our removal. It remains the most traumatic chapter in Chickasaw history. Following the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Chickasaw leaders negotiated to avoid complete destruction. We lost our homeland, and removal to “Indian Territory” followed. Our people rebuilt in what is now the state of Oklahoma.

That history is not distant to me, but my relationship to it is complicated. I grew up outside our modern tribal lands. My connection to the Chickasaw Nation is real, but geographically distant. I did not grow up on the land my ancestors defended. In that sense, I grew up in a kind of diaspora, or “at-large” citizens as we’re called today. My identity was shaped by stories of both old and new homelands that I knew through occasional visits, family, tribal citizenship, and history rather than daily life.

That experience shapes how I think about Israel.

Like the Jewish people’s story, the reality of a people seeking to secure their homeland is something I understand from my own Indigenous background. Chickasaws were removed from our original territory and had to reestablish political and cultural roots in a new place. We did not disappear. We reorganized, rebuilt governance structures, and maintained a national identity despite forced displacement.

Israel represents a different historical path. The Jewish people returned to their ancestral homeland and established a modern state. The state of Israel now faces an enemy in the Iranian regime that openly calls for its destruction. Whether one approaches this from a religious or political perspective, the issue at its core is sovereignty. Can a people define and defend its homeland without being destroyed?

For me, the connection between Purim, Jewish, and Chickasaw histories is not about drawing simplistic parallels. The histories basically differ in scale, context, and outcome. The Chickasaw were forcibly removed and rebuilt elsewhere. The Jewish people reestablished sovereignty in their ancestral land. These are not interchangeable stories.

The common thread is more specific. It is the question of whether a people can live with dignity in relation to homeland. For some, that means defending an existing state. For others, it means navigating life as citizens within political systems they do not fully control.

As a Chickasaw Christian living in Israel, I do not claim Purim as my story. I do recognize the underlying issue it raises though. When a people faces the possibility of erasure, survival depends on more than sentiment. Capacities such as political organization, alliances, negotiation, defense, and cultural cohesion all matter. The will to survive is necessary, but it is not sufficient on its own.

The Jewish people, like peoples everywhere with deep roots, carry identities that long predate any single political order. Their history includes dispersion across continents, survival under hostile powers, and the eventual reestablishment of sovereignty in their ancestral homeland. The direction of their homeland will ultimately be shaped by them. Stability and dignity in the modern Middle East depends not only on military strength, but on whether peoples are able to shape futures that reflect their own aspirations.

Homeland can be rebuilt, defended, or lost. The forms differ, but the struggle for dignity does not. Peoples who intend to survive must define who they are, where they belong, and how they will protect both without being destroyed…from the outside and from within. 

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)