Who Knows?

When our moment has finally arrived, will we know it?

Read superficially, the Purim story follows a familiar arc. The wicked Haman plots to exterminate the Jews. Luckily, Esther has become queen and plots to exterminate Haman. She courageously speaks up, the villain is hanged, the Jews are saved. Roll credits.

It’s a classic tale of right place at the right time. Though God’s name is conspicuously absent from the text, we get the impression that everything has been orchestrated oh so perfectly in advance. The timing is impeccable: out of every girl in the Persian empire, Esther is chosen to become queen. She has the king’s ear right when it matters most for her people. Of course it is her moment. It’s so obvious, right?

Wrong. It’s only obvious because we know what happened next.

One of my teachers in Israel, the renowned Bible expert Rabbi Avraham Rivlin, once made a simple point that has stayed with me for over two decades. We, the readers, tend to forget that — unlike the characters in these stories — we already know the ending.

But in the moment, Abraham didn’t realize an angel was going to stop him from sacrificing Isaac. The Israelites at the sea didn’t realize it was going to split. And Esther, despite all that had happened to her, still didn’t realize that she was going to be the one to save her people.

No, Esther needs convincing. Her own life, after all, is on the line. Now strip away the hindsight and listen to what Mordechai actually says when he makes his appeal:

“Do not imagine that you, out of all the Jews, will be able to escape by being in the king’s palace. On the contrary, if you stay silent at a time like this, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from some other place, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows — perhaps it is for a time just like this that you have become queen.” (Esther 4:13-14)

U’mi yodea. Who knows? Perhaps. Could be. That’s the best Mordechai could do?

These are not the words of a man feigning certainty. They’re the words of a man groping in the dark for a last-ditch effort.

Several commentators, including Rashi and Malbim, pick up on this. “Who knows” is not some grand rhetorical gesture about destiny. Instead, they hear a warning: Who knows whether next year, when the decree takes effect, you’ll still be queen? Who knows if the king will still desire you? The opportunity Esther holds today is not guaranteed tomorrow. Her access, her influence, her proximity to power — all of it is borrowed, and the loan can be called in at any moment.

In other words: I can’t tell you if this is your destined moment. But it might be your only moment.

Every pivotal event in history shares this quality, only revealing patterns after the fact. American independence feels like it was always going to happen. It wasn’t. One week before boldly crossing the Delaware, George Washington wrote to his brother that “I think the game is pretty near up.” He fought anyway.

This is the ironic trick that knowing history plays on us. It converts the uncertainty of the present tense into the inevitability of the past — and in so doing, robs the original actors of the very thing that made them extraordinary.

Esther wasn’t extraordinary because she could intuit her destiny laid out before her. She was extraordinary because she couldn’t — and acted anyway. “And if I am to perish, so shall I perish.” (4:16)

Unlike the Exodus, where the sea splits on cue and pillars of fire light the sky, Purim is a story in which God operates exclusively through momentous human risk-taking, political drama and what looks from every angle like coincidence. And that is precisely what makes it our story — not ancient history, but a mirror held up to every generation that must act without knowing how the chapter ends.

Today, we are living through a literal Scroll of Esther. Just as in the original, the arch-villain’s downfall only comes midway through the script. And, even as “the city of Shushan rang with joyous cries” (8:15) — danger has not been averted. There is still much at stake, much work to be done.

When future generations tell your story and mine, which parts will look obvious in hindsight? What opportunities will we have leveraged — and decisions made — that define our legacy? Will we have been the generation to ensure that “Never Again” was more than a slogan? And like Esther, the generation that overturned a genocidal regime plotting to destroy our people?

Will we have been ordinary people who accomplished something extraordinary?

The window is open. Mordechai would remind us that it won’t stay open forever.

Who knows.

Rabbi Matthew Rosenberg is Executive Vice President and Senior Rabbi at JGO: The Jewish Grad Organization (gojgo.org), which provides Jewish programming at over 150 graduate school campuses across North America. He previously practiced corporate law and taught at Georgetown University Law Center. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.