By: Nomi Kaltmann as seen in ABC Australia
3 March 2026
Out of all Jewish festivals, I think Purim has always been my favourite. On Purim, Jews dress in costumes, give each other Mishloach Manot (food parcels) and listen to a reading of the Megillah, the scroll that retells the story of the Book of Esther. This festival is the most fun for kids, and my children have been counting down the days until they get to dress up and gorge themselves on lollies — all in the spirit of an ancient Jewish festival.
And yet, at its core, Purim holds out profound messages for the modern age. While the ancient story commemorates the attempted genocide of the Jewish people in Persia more than two millennia ago, it’s also a reminder that, even in moments that appear hopeless or predetermined, history can turn in unexpected ways.
The heroine of the Purim story, Esther, is a Jewish woman who becomes queen and, through a mixture of timing and courage, she intervenes to stop a royal decree ordering the destruction of the Jews. The villain, Haman, is a powerful court official whose hatred of Jews escalates into a plan for mass annihilation.
But this year, reading the Book of Esther feels almost unnervingly contemporary.
For the first time in decades, Israel is in direct conflict with Iran — the modern successor to ancient Persia where the Purim story unfolds. Sitting in synagogue listening to the Megillah, I am sure I will not be alone in feeling the eerie historical echo.
As Jews celebrate an ancient deliverance from Persia, we are watching a modern confrontation play out in real time, with all the uncertainty and geopolitical complexity that accompanies this difficult time for so many millions of people in the Middle East.
Interestingly, throughout the book of Esther, the name of God is never mentioned. The absence of God’s name has always been one of Purim’s most unsettling aspects. In most books in the Bible, God’s intervention is explicit, but in the Book of Esther, everything unfolds through what looks, on the surface, like coincidence.
For generations, Jewish commentators have understood the absence of God’s name not as an omission, but as one of Purim’s central messages. In Jewish belief, God is always present, but sometimes God’s presence is not always obvious. Sometimes it is only visible in hindsight, through the way events unfold.
Over the past year, many Jews have found themselves asking questions that are as old as Jewish history itself. Why did God allow the events of 7 October 2023 to happen? Where is God in times of violence? How do we make sense of the time we are living through, where so many millions of people suffering, sitting in bomb shelters, during the festival of Purim?
The Book of Esther does not offer easy answers to these questions. It does not attempt to explain why the Jews of ancient Persia were forced to live for months under the looming threat of annihilation, or to justify their suffering. Instead, it presents a world that looks very much like our own — one shaped by fear, politics, uncertainty and long stretches where it feels like nothing will change.
And yet the belief at the heart of Purim — expressed by the phrase v’nahafōch hû‘ in Esther 9:1, which means “then the opposite happened” — is that everything can suddenly turn around, and that a situation that appears hopeless can shift in an instant. In Purim, the Jews are taken from the brink of destruction to survival. That message feels especially powerful this year.
As Jews read the Megillah against the backdrop of war, rising antisemitism and global instability, we join together in praying for the safety of all people in the Middle East.