Tisha b’Av, which falls this Sunday, is a day of national mourning that marks the destruction of the First and Second Temples, while Purim celebrates the salvation of the Jews of Persia as described in the book of Esther. Yet Laura Lieber points to a link between them: two ancient poems that, while written in the style of Tisha b’Av dirges (kinot), are attributed to Queen Esther:

It is difficult to imagine two holidays with more disparate moods: the giddy joy of Purim juxtaposed with the bleak solemnity of Tisha b’Av. There are, however, points of connection. . . . [W]hile the book of Esther does not name God, it does refer to the exile and the loss of Jerusalem, particularly when introducing Mordechai. . . . [There is even a] custom of chanting those verses that recall the exile of the Judeans from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar to the melody of Lamentations, which is read on the Tisha b’Av. . . .

A potent affinity between the book of Esther and Tisha b’Av can be found in the composition of kinot placed, as it were, in the mouth of Esther. These works expand upon the moment in the biblical story when the Jewish queen embarks on a fast and calls upon fellow Jews to engage in penitential rituals with her, as she is to risk her life by visiting the king uninvited. Her community, already vulnerable in exile, faces another existential threat.

Esther’s laments . . . lack any of the carnivalesque irony or frisson of the subversive humor that we expect in Purim poetry. Instead, Esther’s two laments sound authentically penitent. The rhetoric and aesthetics of Tisha b’Av kinot provide the author of these “literary” Purim poems . . . with a set of norms to which Esther’s prayers should conform.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.