‘Leil Shimurim’: Iran’s Attack on Israel

How does one convey in words a supernal event of epic proportions?

I cannot recall what it was like to walk through the desert wilderness and feel the relief and exaltation at the moment of the splitting of the Red Sea 3200 years ago, nor can I share from my own memory what it felt like on the 14th of May, 1948, to realize the dream of Jewish independence and revival of Jewish sovereignty in our ancestral homeland after 2000 years of longing.

But I can share with you the story of national redemption that happened last night, on the 14th of April 2024, when I marveled through a night of astonishing wonders and lived through a window in the arc of time when history was made. At 1:45am, our little but spirited country waited tensely and with bated breath as hundreds of ballistic missiles and UAVs took flight 1500km from Iran, with the sole mission of destroying the one and only Jewish State.

Somewhere between the message of Purim- where the outcome can be flipped at any moment as God is driving the narrative- and the Passover story of freedom- when the Jews are taken out from Egypt by God, and led by Moses through the wilderness in a timeless journey towards their destiny- lies the story of less than 24 hours ago and is set in the skies above the Promised Land.

I am still striving to grasp the enormity of the moment and the surreal nature of last night’s events: a major threat from an enemy country made tangibly real, a small nation either fighting in defense, or praying, or both and overcoming fear, and an unprecedented missile attack (the largest the world has ever seen) being intercepted by the Iron Dome and Israel’s allies.

The explosions above our heads shook the walls of our home. Any apprehension that was felt immediately dissipated as the evening turned into a crescendo of IDF top-notch defense capabilities and revealed miracles in the form of 330 interceptions of Iranian warheads. A true wonder to behold! ונהפוך הוא

Despite uncertainty on the home front about how the current state of affairs will play out, one truth cannot be denied- the Jews are an eternal people. As we read in the Passover Haggadah, “In every generation they rise up to destroy us. But the Holy One, Blessed be He, delivers us from their hands.”

“To be a Jew is to be part of a history touched, in a mysterious yet unmistakable way, by the hand of Providence.”- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks­ 

עם ישראל חי