Purim Is the Holiday of October 8th Jews
How to Stay Awake After the Surge
A few months ago, I met with a group of Jewish public school students in New Jersey. One of them, a sixteen-year-old boy, showed me a large Magen David necklace and told me he hasn’t taken it off since October 7th — even arguing with his parents about whether to keep it on when he travels in Europe.
I have been thinking about him ever since.
October 7th cracked something open in Jews across the world: those who had thought of themselves as assimilated and long-disengaged. We gave it a name: October 8th Jews. Jews who woke up.
The numbers were remarkable. Synagogue attendance surged. Jewish organizational giving surged. Young Jews who had never cared suddenly cared deeply.
But Jewish educators will tell you what newer data is beginning to confirm: the surge is stabilizing. For months after October 7th, those of us who run Jewish communal spaces kept having to buy more chairs.
Now things have leveled — still meaningfully higher than before, and some of those who became newly activated have become the new Jewish leaders we so desperately need.
But the acute crisis has softened into background noise, and not everyone who woke up as an October 8th Jew has remained engaged.
As we approach Purim, the question before us isn’t what awakened October 8th Jews. We know the power of shocking antisemitism. The question is what will sustain them. What will keep that necklace on when — God willing — antisemitism fades.
Purim offers an answer. It is, after all, the holiday of the first October 8th Jews.
If we approach the Megillah without a rabbinic gloss, Mordechai and Esther can be read as assimilated, deeply integrated Persian Jews. They bear names linked to Persian culture and move comfortably within palace politics.1
Mordechai sits at the king’s gate. Esther conceals her Jewish identity when taken to the king’s harem. Their outer lives reflected the world of the empire more than the world of their people.
And then Haman comes and secures a decree to murder every Jew in the empire.
Mordechai and Esther both face a monumental choice. Mordechai could have made efforts to escape Haman’s plan. Instead, he steps forward publicly fully inhabiting his identity as Mordechai HaYehudi, Mordechai the Jew, a Jewish leader concerned with his people’s fate.
Esther could have remained silent, hidden, safe. Mordechai challenges her with words that still reverberate: if you stay silent, salvation will come from elsewhere — but you and your father’s house will be forgotten. Who knows if it is not for precisely this moment that you became queen.
And Esther chooses. “If I perish, I perish.” In one sentence she stops hiding and claims her place as a Jew responsible for her people.
Antisemitism awakens them. Crisis clarifies their belonging. Mordechai and Esther are the first biblically portrayed diaspora Jews who appear culturally integrated and only publicly assert their Jewish identity when threatened with annihilation. They are our original October 8th Jews.
But the Megillah does not end there. And neither can we.
Because the real legacy of Purim is not a formula for defeating antisemitism — and it is not a claim that we need antisemitism to awaken us. It is something more demanding and more generous: a blueprint for how to live Jewishly beyond Haman.
The clearest evidence lies in what Mordechai and Esther do, and do not do, once Haman is gone.
They do not leave behind a manual for defeating Haman. They portray multiple strategies to fighting Jew-hatred without prescribing one: Mordechai’s defiant public Jewishness, collective fasting and prayer, and Esther’s carefully staged banquets and political maneuvering.
In doing so, Mordechai and Esther refuse to reduce redemption to a formula. Salvation unfolds through prayer and politics, courage and coincidence, human initiative and hidden divine providence — all intertwined. The next Haman will not look exactly like the last. No single strategy can guarantee safety.
Instead, after Haman’s defeat, Mordechai and Esther do something wiser: they establish structures for Jewish continuity. Perhaps they understood something sober: that the awakening after crisis can be real and still be fleeting. They wanted to make sure the awakening that they themselves experienced become lasting beyond any crisis.
They commanded the annual reading of the Megillah — so memory becomes shared, embodied, and public. They instituted mishloach manot, gifts sent to one another, so Jews practice connection and generosity across the community. They established matanot la’evyonim, gifts to the poor, so solidarity extends to the most vulnerable. And they mandated the seudah, the celebratory feast, so that relief becomes shared joy.
Notice what none of these mitzvot require: Haman.
None of them depend on the presence of an enemy. They are expressions of what we are to one another, habits that strengthen Jewish peoplehood whether or not Haman is knocking at the door.
They build a Jewish life full enough, joyful enough, obligated enough, that when Haman appears, he interrupts something already vibrant. He does not create it.
Mordechai and Esther turned a moment of danger and awakening into something durable, leaving us not just a story of survival but mitzvot that carry Jewish life into ordinary time.
There are people who believe we need Haman. I will never forget a moment at a conference eight years ago when one of them said so out loud.
A prominent scholar of American Jewish life said something that too many people think but are too polite to express: that only rising antisemitism will push back the tide of Jewish assimilation and apathy in America.
I remember being angry. And I remember offering a quiet prayer: please, God, do not send us that test.
Alas, the scholar’s prediction came to pass. We have seen a resurgence of antisemitism unlike anything in recent American memory — and we have seen a generation of Jews awakened as rarely before.
And now comes the harder reckoning.
Because what Purim teaches us is that antisemitism can wake us up — but it cannot keep us Jewish.
The question before us now is whether we will do what Mordechai and Esther did. Whether we will take this October 8th awakening and build something lasting from it.
Not a Judaism defined by those who hate us. A Judaism defined by what and who we love.
Purim does not teach us to defeat our enemies. It teaches us to outlive them — by building a Jewish life too full, too joyful, too alive to be extinguished.
Shabbat Shalom & Hag Purim Sameach!
Mijal
Practical Guide for This Week
Purim is shaped by a cluster of special mitzvot — commandments and practices — that begin before the holiday itself and carry us through the day. Here is a brief guide to each of them.
Shabbat Zakhor:
This Shabbat we will read the portion of Tetzaveh in synagogue. Tetzaveh contains God’s instructions to Moses regarding the garments of the priests and the inauguration of the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary the Israelites built in the wilderness during their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.
This Shabbat is also known as Shabbat Zakhor. Zakhor means remember. It is the Shabbat before Purim, and on it we read a special additional Torah portion commemorating the Torah’s injunction to remember what Amalek did to the Jewish people after the exodus from Egypt.
We read it specifically before Purim because Haman, the villain of the Purim story, is identified in the Megillah as a descendant of Amalek, connecting the ancient enemy to the Persian one and reminding us that the threat Amalek represents did not disappear. Amalek attacked without provocation, no territorial dispute, and nothing to gain. They targeted the stragglers at the rear of the Israelite camp, the weakest and most vulnerable. The Torah gives us three commandments regarding Amalek: to remember what they did, not to forget, and ultimately to blot out their memory. It is a mitzvah to hear this public Torah reading in a communal setting this Shabbat.
On Amalek & Purim
I recently had the chance to sit down again with my friend Rabbi Justin Pines, CEO of JBS, on his Jewish Insights show. We first spoke about Amalek two years ago (check it out here).
This year we returned to the topic, in a very different moment for our community.
That return felt meaningful. We reflected on what has changed in the last two years, on antisemitism, Jewish peoplehood, and how our understanding of Amalek lands differently now.
You can watch the conversation below, or listen at this link.
The Fast of Esther: This Monday is the Fast of Esther, a minor fast from dawn to nightfall. It is observed on the eve of Purim and commemorates the fasting and prayer of the Jewish people during the events of the Purim story — evoking the spirit of Esther’s call to the Jewish people to fast and pray together before she approached the king. Our sages instituted it as an annual practice of Jewish peoplehood: we fast and stand together in vulnerability, before we celebrate together.
The Four Mitzvot of Purim
It’s easy for Purim to become about costumes and creative food packages. But beneath all of that are four mitzvot that carry the real weight of the day:
📜 Megillah: Hearing the public reading of the Book of Esther, once at night and again during the day.
Over the years, this has become one of my favorite moments of Purim. Standing together, listening to the ancient story unfold, feeling the tension and the relief — and in my case, taking part in our community’s annual women’s Megillah reading. We’re not just remembering the story. We’re stepping into it.
🎁 Mishloach Manot: Sending food gifts to friends and community members. At minimum, two different foods to one person.
It’s beautiful when they’re elaborate. But the mitzvah isn’t about presentation — it’s about connection. A simple package delivered with intention can carry more meaning than the most Pinterest-worthy basket. The point is reaching toward one another. Try to consider whether you have a neighbor or a friend who would be especially moved to receive something from you.
🤲 Matanot La’evyonim: Giving gifts to the poor. At minimum, a monetary gift to two people in need, given on Purim day itself.
This is the mitzvah our tradition emphasizes most. Maimonides teaches that we should spend more on gifts to the poor than on any other Purim expense. If Purim is about joy, then our joy has to widen to include others. A helpful way to think about the minimum is: what does a meal cost where you live? Give at least double that — and if you can, give more.
🥂 Seudah: A festive meal shared with family and community.
There’s something holy about sitting around a table on Purim afternoon — laughter, drinking, a bit of chaos, maybe some singing — and knowing that joy itself is part of the mitzvah. Real joy. The kind that comes from being together.
Highlighting One Way to Give This Purim
When I think about matanot la’evyonim this year, here’s one effort especially close to my heart:
My friend Rabbi Joe Wolfson leads JLIC Tel Aviv, a community that treats this mitzvah not as an afterthought but as the center of Purim itself. Every year they mobilize volunteers to turn giving into something deeply human and communal.
This year they’re preparing gift packages for hundreds of men and women experiencing homelessness in Tel Aviv, for elderly and isolated Holocaust survivors, and for families of hostages — making sure they feel seen, remembered, and held.
If you’re looking for a meaningful way to fulfill this mitzvah, I’d be honored if you considered supporting this wonderful effort. You can donate at this link.
Several scholars and rabbis have noted the assimilated or integrated portrait of Mordechai and Esther in the plain reading of the Megillah. Among them Rabbi Beni Lau and Rabbi Yitz Greenberg.
Beyond the Surge: Sustaining the Essence, Not Just the Trappings
Dr. Bitton powerfully argues that antisemitism can awaken Jewish identity but cannot sustain it. The mitzvot of Purim—shared memory, generosity, obligation, joy—create structures that endure beyond Haman. I agree. But I would suggest we must go one step deeper still.
If we are to sustain not merely Jewish engagement but Jewish essence, we must teach and learn not only what Jews *do*, but what Judaism is *for*.
The danger after crisis is not only that engagement fades. It is that engagement hardens into symbols without substance—necklaces without narrative, institutions without animating purpose, rituals without mission. The trappings may endure. The essence may not.
What, then, is the essence?
From Bereishit onward, Judaism offers a sweeping answer: humanity is charged with *guardianship of Creation*. “L’ovdah u’l’shomrah”—to cultivate and to protect. The Jewish people, as a covenantal community, are tasked with modeling how finite human beings partner with the Divine to extend life, justice, wisdom, and flourishing in the world.
We are not merely survivors of history.
We are meant to be exemplars of responsible power.
The mitzvot of Purim themselves point in this direction. Mishloach manot builds social cohesion. Matanot la’evyonim institutionalizes care for the vulnerable. The public reading of the Megillah embeds moral memory. The seudah transforms relief into shared gratitude. These are not just identity markers. They are practices of civilization-building.
They train a people in how to sustain human thriving.
If antisemitism awakens Jews to belonging, then the purpose of Judaism must awaken Jews to responsibility. Not responsibility only for Jewish survival, but for the extension of human flourishing.
To teach that we are co-creators with the Ribbono Shel Olam—to build just courts, ethical markets, resilient families, wise technologies, compassionate communities—is to give Jewish life a forward-facing mission. A Judaism defined not only by who hates us, nor even solely by what we love internally, but by what we are building for the world.
This reframes continuity.
The question is not only:
How do we keep the necklace on when Haman fades?
It is also:
What does that necklace signify about our covenantal role in history?
A Judaism rooted in guardianship of Creation and co-creation of longer arcs of human thriving does not depend on crisis. It depends on vision. It asks young Jews not merely to defend identity, but to embody purpose.
Antisemitism may wake us up.
Mitzvot may structure our belonging.
But mission—shared, transcendent, demanding mission—keeps a people alive across centuries.
Purim teaches us to outlive our enemies.
Creation theology teaches us why we are here in the first place.
If we can teach that—deeply, rigorously, joyfully—then the awakening of October 8th will not thin. It will mature.
I’m a 35 y/o reform Jew with deep ties to Judaism. I thank my parents for laying that foundation, and NFTY, sleepaway camp, and AMHSI for securing it, as these activities really made judaism feel lived, social, and attainable.
More than ever, we need to be investing in and actively supporting these types of programs if we want the next generation to find and sustain their Jewish identity. I also believe the broader community could do a better job creating opportunities for young adults. I’m in NYC, and while there is of course a lot happening (probably the most in the country) there’s still a noticeable drop off after certain life stages, leaving real white space for more intentional engagement.
There’s understandably been such a strong focus on discussing antisemitism (and I agree there needs to be!), but defense and discussion alone can’t be the only entry points. IMO, the best thing we can do is show, not just tell, what Judaism offers by building environments, communities, and experiences people genuinely want to be part of.
While my Substack isn’t explicitly about Judaism, much of its ethos and deeper meaning comes from it. The instinct to question everything, to examine, to wrestle, to seek understanding rather than accept at face value, is something I learned early through my Jewish education, and it continues to shape how I move through the world.