As the sun set on rows of identical, limestone apartment buildings in Beit Shemesh Monday evening, ushering in the Purim holiday, a lone Iranian missile streaked across the sky.

Too distant to trigger sirens, the projectile soon met its end on the business side of an interceptor. Far below, a couple of curious young Haredi boys — one dressed as an elderly rabbi with a fake white beard, another as the biblical Joseph — gazed at the sky from a ledge overlooking the sprawling bedroom city.

They had come from a synagogue nearby, where a crowd was gathering to hear the megillah reading, a recitation of the biblical Book of Esther, which recounts the Jews’ victory against their persecutor Haman in ancient Persia.

Such readings are often raucous affairs, with congregants dressed in fun costumes marking the carnival-like holiday. But the mood this Purim was considerably less sanguine.

Just a day prior, a ballistic missile hit a synagogue in Beit Shemesh, crushing a public shelter beneath it and killing nine people, including several children, and injuring over 40 others. The strike, the deadliest exacted by Iran so far in this war, shook the city both physically and spiritually.

The vast majority of synagogues in Beit Shemesh — which boasts a large ultra-Orthodox population — were still up and running for Purim night, flouting wartime guidelines set by the IDF’s Home Front Command barring public gatherings. But Purim’s typical exuberant atmosphere was nevertheless subdued.

While many stayed home due to the army’s restrictions, residents said that the fresh catastrophe was in large part to blame for the conspicuous lack of public celebration on the streets, which were largely empty save for small groups of carousing teenagers.

“The tragedy very much lowers the volume, on an emotional level,” said Chana Orly Schmidt, the wife of the rabbi at a local Chabad synagogue.

At the same time, Schmidt confessed that the story of Purim — detailing Queen Esther’s foiling of a plot by Haman, the adviser to Persian King Ahashverosh, to exterminate the kingdom’s Jews — had become even more resonant in light of the catastrophe, as Israel continues to wage war against the Islamic Republic.

“It’s not just history, it’s happening now,” she said as a sparse number of congregants trickled into the synagogue that night. “God commands us to hear the megillah as something that is happening today, in the present… there is always someone that comes to oppress the Jewish nation, to destroy us.”

The war, she said, placed her and other residents at a “crossroads” between ceding to sadness or obeying God’s will. “God wants us to be happy on Purim,” she said.

“Are we drifting downwards — after witnessing the depressing reality — to a place of sorrow? Or instead, amplifying the voice of God, which is telling us to be joyful,” she asked.

In previous years, the local Chabad family has held hourly megillah recitations outside in a large public park on Purim evening, drawing around a hundred people each reading. But this time, just over a dozen had quietly shown up at the synagogue.

Illuminated by fluorescent lights, the synagogue sported sparse decorations — pennant banners wishing congregants a happy Purim and a sparkly sash that was laid across the bimah. Schmidt’s husband appeared a few minutes before the reading.

“There’s always been music, activities for children — we were going to have art projects this year. But we had to move it inside, because there’s a public shelter here,” said Rabbi Aharon Schmidt.

One of the few rabbis to consciously scale back the holiday was Rabbi Yehoshua Gerzi, who heads the city’s Pilzno Shul, when he announced to the public that Purim services would be cancelled. Still, he organized several limited, separate prayer quorums.

This was to ensure that as few people as possible would gather in a given place, and would always remain near a protected area in case of sirens. “The point is that quorums still need to go on, but they should go on safely,” he said.

At around 9:30 p.m., the streets were mostly quiet, aside from occasional shouts and howls from small bands of teenagers roaming around with alcoholic drinks in hand. Families were few and far between, with most going straight home after readings.

David Zino, a soldier in the Israeli Navy, hadn’t had a full night’s sleep for three days by the time he traveled back home from his base in Haifa.

He was nevertheless drinking arak with his two brothers at a playground as techno music blasted from a nearby speaker. They were some of the only people out and about at the time.

Decked out in an Israeli flag and scruffy blonde wig, the 19-year-old said he had begged his commander for holiday leave. “I pushed for a vacation day, half the team’s still at sea, the other half celebrating,” he said sheepishly.

Zino’s brother Yitzhak, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit with fake tattoos covering his neck and arms, insisted that despite the war and intermittent missile fire, the siblings would celebrate Purim as they usually do.

“Because we’re at war right now, not many feel like celebrating, but the holiday has barely started and we’re already partying,” he added optimistically. “By the time it’s over, Purim 2026 will have been the most joyful ever.”

Are you relying on The Times of Israel for accurate and timely coverage of the Iran war right now? If so, please join The Times of Israel Community. For as little as $6/month, you will:

Support our independent journalists who are working around the clock under difficult conditions to cover this conflict;

Read ToI with a clear, ads-free experience on our site, apps and emails; and

Gain access to exclusive content shared only with the ToI Community, including weekly letters from founding editor David Horovitz.

We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.

You clearly find our careful reporting of the Iran war valuable, at a time when facts are often distorted and news coverage often lacks context.

Your support is essential to continue our work. We want to continue delivering the professional journalism you value, even as the demands on our newsroom have grown dramatically during this ongoing conflict.

So today, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. For as little as $6 a month you'll become our partners while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.

Thank you,David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel

1 IDF strike kills Hezbollah intel chief; Lebanon to ban terror group’s military activity

2 AnalysisSinking Iran’s proxies, Sinwar’s Al-Aqsa Flood left Khamenei high and dry

3 Rubio cites planned Israeli attack as a key reason US launched strikes against Iran

4 PM: Iran’s nuke program would have been ‘immune in months’; Witkoff: They bragged to us about enrichment

5 ‘Depart now’: US tells its citizens to urgently leave almost all Mideast countries, including Israel

6 Iran claims Hormuz Strait is closed, threatens to set shipping there ‘ablaze’

7 As war widens, Trump says US has yet to launch largest strikes on Iran

8 Hours after Trump announced ban on Claude AI, US military used it in Iran strikes — reports

2026 US-Israel war with Iran

© The Times of Israel