Moving confidently to fill the voids of history
Last Friday, I WhatsApped my dear mentor and colleague, Rabbi Freundlich, to ask what he was planning to speak about on Shabbos. He shared an idea. By Shabbos morning, as the news broke, it no longer felt like an idea. It felt like a lens through which to understand the moment.
A we read Zachor and Parshas Tetzaveh, the United States and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran. Supreme Leader Khamenei was killed, and the Islamic Republic, the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror for decades, began to fracture. The Torah speaks to every moment. But sometimes the alignment is so precise it stops you cold.
Parshas Tetzaveh contains one of the most striking anomalies in the Torah: Moshe Rabbeinu’s name does not appear. From the time he is introduced in Shemos until his passing in Devarim, this is the only parsha in which he is entirely absent. The omission is not accidental. It is deliberate.
Moshe steps back. Aharon steps forward.
One towering presence recedes, and space opens for another to rise.
True leadership is not self-preservation. It is space-making. Greatness is not only what a person builds. It is what he allows others to become.
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In Hilchos Shabbos there is a melachah called mochaik, erasing. But erasing alone is not the full act. The melachah is mochaik al menas lichtov, erasing for the sake of writing something new. Rav Kook applied this framework to mechiyas Amalek. The goal was never annihilation for its own sake. Destruction alone is not holy. The erasure is al menas lichtov, to make room for Kavod Shamayim, the glory of G-d. The clearing is only the beginning. The writing is the purpose.
A canvas is cleared so that something greater can be inscribed.
Now look at where we stand.
The regime that bankrolled Hamas, rebuilt Hezbollah, armed the Houthis, funded proxy wars against the Jewish state, and pursued nuclear capability with the declared goal of annihilating Israel is collapsing. For years it exported terror as policy. Inside Iran, protesters who endured massacres and brutal crackdowns are filling the streets.
This is a mochaik on a historic scale.
And it came during the Parsha of the missing name. On the heels of Zachor. Just before Purim, the holiday that teaches us what happens after Amalek falls.
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The Megillah does not say the Jews merely survived after Haman fell. It says, “LaYehudim Haysah Orah VeSimchah VeSason VeYikar” (8:16).
There was light. There was joy. There was gladness. There was honor.
When Mordechai walked through Shushan in royal garments, when the city that had been paralyzed by fear erupted in celebration, the story did not end with Haman’s execution. Amalek’s fall was not the climax. It was the clearing.
The Jews stepped into the space hatred once occupied and rewrote its meaning.
The response to Haman is not only to defeat Haman. Defeating evil may be necessary. Sometimes it is miraculous. But it is never the endgame. The sacred work is what comes next.
Just as Moshe stepped back so that Aharon could rise, history sometimes removes one force so another can emerge. A void opens.
And a void does not fill itself.
It waits for moral courage. For spiritual confidence. For a people willing to write.
Orah VeSimchah VeSason VeYikar. Light where there was fear. Joy where there was trauma. Honor where there was humiliation.
The canvas is being cleared before our eyes.
It is time to write.
Rabbi Benny Berlin is spiritual leader of BACH in Long Beach. www.bachlongbeach.com.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar
