I had planned a kiddush at home and was scheduled to speak in synagogue after the reading of Parshat Zachor. Every year on the Shabbat before Purim we read those verses: remember what Amalek did to the people of Israel on their way out of Egypt — how he attacked the stragglers, how he targeted the vulnerable, how he saw human fragility as opportunity.

I had prepared two versions of my remarks: one if there were missiles, and one if there were not.

We know how it turned out.

In the end, I delivered neither.

After the service, outside the synagogue, with F-24s from a nearby base roaring overhead, I spoke for three minutes.

My father’s father died during the Six Day War. My father was a dor-l’dor man — remember the past, build a future. He felt most comfortable at the seder table. He would have loved the fly-over.

I said only this: you will never forget this day.

It would have been easy to rehearse the parallels between ancient Persia and modern Iran, but that both distracts from and cheapens the moment.

What was most striking was the unspoken awareness we felt, not only a community, but one living inside a history thousands of years old, a past with a future.

I could have said many things. Instead, I said: put a pin in this moment. Remember this moment of shared devotion and courage. Remember the connection to one another. Remember the connection to the story we inherit. We don’t know what the end looks like, but we know there is one, however much, as we approach it, it vanishes on the horizon.

It turns out that ordinary people like us sometimes find ourselves standing inside something biblical and civilizational at once. The responsibility is enormous.

It is also a blessing.