The Prime Minister’s Office released footage Sunday from a security consultation held the previous night, at the height of Operation “Roaring Lion.” Gathered around the table were the Prime Minister, senior cabinet ministers, and Shin Bet chief David Zini.
On that table, clearly visible, was the Manot HaLevi, Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz’s commentary on the Book of Esther. Alkabetz (c. 1500–1580), the celebrated poet and mystic of Safed, is best known as the composer of Lecha Dodi.
It is hard to imagine a more fitting text for the moment.
In discussing Mordecai’s challenge to Esther, ki im hacharesh tacharishi ba’et hazot, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish; and who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14), the Manot HaLevi opens with a verse from Proverbs: hit’rapita b’yom tzarah, tzar kochecha, “If you falter in the day of adversity, your strength is small” (Proverbs 24:10).
Drawing on Rabbeinu Yonah, Alkabetz develops a striking principle: the one who could have acted and did not is not innocent. Failure to think, to plan, and to exert oneself in an effort to save is itself a transgression. The strength that was not used becomes the strength of the aggressor.
Modern moral language often treats power as inherently suspect. The underdog is often granted a kind of automatic moral standing simply by being weaker, as though vulnerability were itself a virtue. For Israel, this has long been a central challenge: not only is its strength scrutinized, but strength itself is often treated as a disqualification. The stronger party, the more capable military, the more established state; these become indictments rather than descriptions.
The Manot HaLevi points to a neglected truth: power can obligate. The ability to save is not merely a privilege; it is a responsibility. One who can rescue the endangered and refrains has not thereby remained above the fray with clean hands. He may instead have become responsible. Hit’rapita b’yom tzarah: slackness on a day of distress is not neutrality. It is a choice, and it is judged as one.
That is why Israel’s capacity matters so much here. The Iranian regime has threatened Israel with annihilation, exported terror across the region and beyond, and for decades has oppressed its own people under a violent theocracy. Those endangered by that regime, Israelis and Iranians alike, have precious few actors with the capability, intelligence, and proximity to do anything about it.
This is Mordecai’s message to Esther: her access to the king is not incidental; it is the very source of her obligation. U’mi yodea im la’et kazot higat lamalkhut; who knows if it was not for a moment precisely like this that you came to royalty?
The Manot HaLevi adds another layer, one especially relevant now. Esther’s obligation is not only situational. It is historical. Mordecai points as well to a debt attached to the house of Saul. Saul had been commanded to complete the battle against Amalek, yet Agag was left alive. What should have been decisively finished was left unfinished. The result was not peace, but postponement. The forces of destruction were not eradicated; they were left able to survive, regroup, and return.
Wars fought inconclusively, and terrorism tolerated rather than decisively defeated, are not merely strategic failures. They become moral failures as well. When murderous forces are contained, managed, or weakened but left standing, the reckoning is not avoided but only deferred. When it returns, it often returns with greater force.
Haman’s plot was not simply a one-time eruption of hatred. It was the reappearance of an old evil that had been permitted to endure. Hit’rapita b’yom tzarah; when one disengages despite being in a position to act, that is not merely a missed opportunity. It is a forfeiture. When the threat now faced is itself the result of evil once left insufficiently defeated, the weight of that forfeiture becomes greater still.
Esther did not need an abstract philosophical argument. She needed to understand what it meant that she was already there, already positioned, already capable, already the one to whom the hour had been given.
Mordecai’s words still carry their force across the centuries: U’mi yodea im la’et kazot higat lamalkhut; who knows if it was not for a moment precisely like this that you came to royalty? There are times when history places people and nations at the point where capacity and obligation converge, and when the only adequate response is to rise and meet the moment.
Rabbi Feldman
