Where's the Jubilation?

Israel just won a remarkable, perhaps miraculous victory. So why do we feel so empty?

Following the Six Day War in 1967, Jews across the world experienced an almost unprecedented sense of jubilation, a feeling that history was moving inexorably forward into a new era of redemption.¹

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks paints a vivid portrait of the feelings that engulfed Jews living outside of Israel, both in the days immediately before the the war and after it was over:

Throughout the university Jews suddenly became visible. Day after day they crowded into the little synagogue in the center of town. Students and dons who had never before publicly identified as Jews could be found there praying. Others began collecting money. Everyone wanted to help in some way, to express their solidarity, their identification with Israel’s fate. It was some time before we realized that the same phenomenon was repeating itself throughout the world. From the United States to the Soviet Union, Jews were riveted to their television screens or radios, anxious to hear the latest news, involved, on edge, as if it were their own lives that were at stake. The rest is history. The war was fought and won. It lasted a mere six days, one of the most spectacular victories in modern history. We could celebrate and breathe safely again. Life went back to normal.

But not completely. For I had witnessed something in those days and weeks that didn’t make sense in the rest of my world. It had nothing to do with politics or war or even prayer. It had to do with Jewish identity. Collectively the Jewish people had looked in the mirror and said, We are still Jews. And by that they meant more than a private declaration of faith, “religion” in the conventional sense of the word. It meant that they felt part of a people, involved in its fate, implicated in its destiny, caught up in its tragedy, exhilarated by its survival. I had felt it. So had every other Jew I knew.²

Yesterday, Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire after twelve days of fighting. History moves forward, memories shift in an instant, and it is difficult to recall an emotional state from only thirteen days ago. If, however, I go back in my mind to that early Friday morning at 3 AM, recognizing that Israel had finally done it, that Israeli planes were bombing Tehran and other sites throughout Iran, that Iran was certainly going to retaliate in ways that would dwarf its previous attacks against Israel… I recall a pit in my stomach, and an acute and deep sense of fear. This was the fight that was both inevitable and necessary, and I had silently been worried about it for years.

Over the course of the war, 28 Israelis were killed by Iranian missiles, and hundreds were injured. These losses are tragic and can never be minimized.

We must also acknowledge that before the Israeli government decided to begin its attack, the IDF and home front command anticipated that up to 4000 Israelis might lose their lives, most of them in the first couple of days.³

Israel’s surprise attack was, accordingly, a success literally beyond belief. The Mossad’s penetration of the Iranian government, army, and IRGC was the stuff of unrealistic fiction; the Israeli army’s success in the air - not one downed plane and hundreds of targets hit - seemed almost biblical. And Iran’s response, while extremely painful, was a fraction of what almost everyone feared. The war ended with Iran’s nuclear ambitions in shambles, many of its missiles and launchers eliminated, its proxies cowed and unwilling to help, the “Axis of Resistance” a shell of what it was once assumed to be. This was a success to match any of those in the State of Israel’s history. The Israel of June, 2025 is far, far stronger and more dominant than the Israel of October 7th, 2023.

Yet today, I sense no jubilation.

I can speak only for myself, but I suspect that I’m not alone: the feelings of salvation and celebration articulated by Rabbi Sacks remain a 1967 phenomenon with little relationship with the emotions of Jews today.

Yes, we are thankful and hopeful and recognize that the events of the past two weeks are a sign of divine benevolence. They may well be characterized as miraculous.

But why do we feel so empty?

As I try to understand my own emotions, I can think of five reasons that - at least for me - have tempered any sense of euphoria.

First of all, we woke up this morning to the terrible news that seven soldiers were killed yesterday in Gaza. They were part of the 605th Combat Engineering Battalion; their armored vehicle was hit by an explosive device in Khan Younis. How can we feel a sense of relief when we simultaneously hear about one of the deadliest days for soldiers in Gaza in months?

This, in fact, is related to the second reason: that while the direct war against Iran is over, the war against Hamas continues unabated with our hostages still imprisoned under truly awful conditions. I don’t know whether the IDF should continue fighting there, or if the the government should simply negotiate the return of the remaining hostages, declare victory, and just get out. Each option is fraught with danger, and - unlike the war against Iran - it feels like no matter what happens, the endgame in Gaza will always remain problematic, that “victory” isn’t a word that even means anything in that context.

Third, we have heard Prime Minister Netanyahu’s claim that Israel had “achieved an historic victory, a victory that would stand for generations," and that Iran’s nuclear program was effectively eliminated. President Trump, too, crowed that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been “obliterated.”

On the other hand, CNN reported that the U.S. strikes “did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment.” ABC News reported that according to an Israeli source, the results at Fordo were “really not good” and that no one really knows how much enriched uranium was spirited away before the strikes, or how many centrifuges might still be intact and potentially operational. Can we be truly celebratory when Iran’s program may have been set back by months rather than destroyed altogether?

Of course, ABC also cited a different Israeli source who asserted that the damage throughout the Iranian nuclear program was substantial, and that Fordo was "damaged beyond repair." The point is that we simply don’t know - and neither Donald Trump nor Benjamin Netanyahu has earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Fourth, in the hours after the ceasefire was implemented, Trump gave Israel a vulgar tongue-lashing for the “crime” of self-defense - and our prime minister had no choice but to genuflect. (Read my article where I explain why Trump’s statement was foolish, inappropriate, and entirely in character.) This, too, is a reminder that Israel, for all its success, remains somewhat at the mercy of a mercurial president whose impulses can change the course of history - for good or otherwise. True, no president has ever supported Israel to the degree that Donald Trump has, both in his first term and now - and we also need to sleep with one eye wide open. Indeed, our Sages’ assertion that we do not recite Hallel on Purim because we remain slaves to Achashveirosh⁴ has now acquired contemporary relevance.

Finally, it is difficult to celebrate a victory when we are constantly bombarded with reminders that for many millions of people in the West, Israel is the villain. Israel fought against one of the world’s worst actors, a criminal regime that has openly threatened the Jewish State with extinction for decades, that was building a covert nuclear program in order to bring that threat to fruition, and which oppresses and kills its own people to a frightening degree… and thousands of supposedly enlightened individuals have streamed the streets of New York and London to declare their solidarity with that same murderous government and against the Jewish people.

Just yesterday, Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City. How could it be that the city with the largest Jewish population on earth may be led by a man who has openly advocated globalizing the intifada, who will not say that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish State, who condemned Israel on October 8th, 2023, but twice refused to vote for a New York State Assembly resolution condemning the Holocaust?⁵

When a man like that can win an election in New York, what does that say about the tacit or active acceptance and mainstreaming of antisemitism throughout the world? Can we really feel euphoric when Israel is considered by so many to be a modern Nazi state? When Israel’s survival is seen by countless people as impossibly tragic, our celebration of that survival necessarily coupled with pain.

For these reasons - and I’m sure that, should I dig deeply into my subconscious, I would find others - I feel a sense of emptiness that overwhelms my sense of pride. I know that I need to be grateful to God - and I am! - but it is not easy to celebrate. It is definitely not easy.

On Purim, we are enjoined to drink “until [we] do not know the difference between ‘cursed is Haman’ and ‘blessed is Mordecai.’”⁶ One of the explanations that I find resonant is that Purim is a flawed celebration: the ending is, in some ways, more tragic than the beginning. Esther and Mordecai are forever separated;⁷ the Temple in Jerusalem lies in ruins; Achashveirosh, with his impulsive whims, remains in power; the Jewish people remains in exile. We drink not to celebrate, but to forget: to help us experience gratitude by forgetting the reality that engulfs the actual story.

Perhaps today, we’re experiencing another Purim. Perhaps today, our job is to try to forget.

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1. I do not necessarily mean messianic redemption. As some important Orthodox thinkers have indicated, not every redemption is necessarily messianic.

2. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Radical Then, Radical Now, p. 27.

3. I have heard unconfirmed reports that twelve years ago, when its long-range missile defenses were far less advanced, Israel anticipated far, far more deaths from Iranian missiles than even the 4000 mentioned above.

4. Megilah 14a.

5. Mamdani spokesperson Andrew Epstein explained that Mamdani simply did not have time to vote for the resolution because of his mayoral campaign. He did not explain, however, why he failed to vote for it last year, before his campaign began.

6. Megilah 7b.

7. This is according to the midrashic assumption that they were a married couple.