Every year on Purim I listen for the same word near the end of the Megillah.

It comes tumbling out almost casually — v’nahafoch hu — “and it was reversed.” The decree to annihilate the Jews of Persia collapses into its opposite. The hunted become defenders. The doomed host a feast.

It is a strange kind of victory story. No sea splits. No empire falls. The king remains who he was. The Jews remain a minority. But history tilts.

This year, walking through the streets of Israel in costume and sunlight, that word felt less literary.

This Purim was almost offensively beautiful — warm enough to hint at spring, bright enough to make you forget that we are at war. Children ran between cars dressed as superheroes, soldiers and rebbes. Boisterous singing spilled from synagogues and living rooms, melodies of redemption floating through open windows. For a moment, it felt normal.

And then the sirens sounded.

Since Saturday morning we have had roughly two dozen alarms here in Rehovot, just southeast of Tel Aviv. Each alert still jolts, but no longer surprises. We are veterans now. We move quickly to shelters stocked with water, canned tuna and crackers “just in case,” in that peculiar choreography Israelis have mastered: brisk but not panicked, alert but not dramatic.

In those minutes in the safe room you do not know whether the next sound will be the familiar thud of interception or something far worse. You listen. You wait, measuring the silence until the concussion of an Iron Dome’s interception.

It is hard not to think about Persia when Persia is once again........

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