By Rabbi Tuly Weisz

The king has permitted the Jews of every city to assemble and fight for their lives … and plunder their possessions. Esther 8:11

My wife Abby, starts planning our Purim costumes months in advance. This year, she dressed our whole family as pirates — and somewhere between the eye patches and plastic swords, I found myself thinking about treasure and Pirate’s Booty. And about what the most meaningful Purim in thousands of years might be telling us to do with Iran’s vast oil reserves.

The holiday of Purim commemorates the miraculous salvation of the Jewish people in ancient Persia — modern-day Iran — roughly 2,500 years ago. The villain of the story, Haman, was a high-ranking official in the Persian court who persuaded King Achashverosh (Ahasuerus) to authorize the annihilation of every Jew in the empire. Through the courage of Queen Esther and her cousin Mordechai, the plot was foiled, the Jews were permitted to defend themselves, and Haman was hanged on the very gallows he had built for Mordechai.

Purim is usually celebrated with costumes, noisemakers, and generous gifts of food. But this year, with Israel at war with Iran, the ancient story feels urgently alive. And the question it raises — what to do with the spoils of a defeated enemy — may be more relevant than ever.

The Curious Case of the Unclaimed Treasure

The Book of Esther — the Megillah, or Scroll of Esther, read aloud in synagogues each Purim — has a great deal to say about spoils of war. The theme appears early: when Haman first presents his murderous plan to the king, he sweetens the deal with a staggering bribe of ten thousand silver talents (see Esther 3:9). After the opulent 180-day royal banquet described at the story’s opening, Achashverosh’s treasury was likely depleted, yet the king waves off the offer. He wants Haman’s loyalty, not his silver.

The question of plunder resurfaces more dramatically when Achashverosh grants the Jews the right to fight back. The royal decree is explicit: the Jews are permitted “to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish all the forces of any people or province that would assault them” — and crucially, “to take the spoils” (Esther 8:11). This permission to plunder is repeated again in the decree’s summary (Esther 8:13) and once more in the narrative of the battle itself (Esther 9:10). Three times the text grants the Jews license to take the wealth of their enemies.

Then comes the stunning reversal. Three times — matching the three permissions granted — the Megillah records that the Jews declined. After the fighting in Shushan, the text notes: “but on the spoil they laid not their hand” (Esther 9:10). After the battles throughout the Persian provinces: “but on the spoil they laid not their hand” (Esther 9:15). And in the summary of the entire episode: “but on the plunder they laid not their hand” (Esther 9:16). The repetition is clearly deliberate so that we notice something important.

The parallel to an earlier episode in the Bible is hard to miss. Israel’s first monarch, King Saul, lost his throne precisely because he took valuable spoils from the Amalekites and spared their king, Agag. The prophet Samuel thundered at Saul: “Does God delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22). Haman, the Megillah tells us explicitly, was an Agagite — a descendant of that very Amalekite king. In refusing the plunder, the Jews of Persia were completing what Saul had failed to do: they demonstrated that their war was one of survival and justice, not greed.

An Unfinished Story

The victory of Purim was remarkable. But it was incomplete. Haman and his sons were destroyed, yet Amalek — the people who represent the primal force of evil opposed to Israel’s mission in the world — was not. This is why, to this day, Jews read a special Torah portion on the morning of Purim recalling the original command to blot out Amalek’s memory. The Torah states plainly: “For God’s hand is on the throne of God: God is at war with Amalek throughout the generations” (Exodus 17:16). The rabbis understood this literally: God’s throne is, in a deep mystical sense, incomplete until Amalek is finally defeated.

Additionally, Purim is celebrated with joy, but without the full “Hallel” — the special psalms of praise recited on major festivals like Passover. The reason, our sages explain, is that the Purim salvation was partial. The Jews remained in exile under Persian rule. The enemy was defeated but not destroyed. The story was not over.

Perhaps Mordechai and Esther understood that the booty of Persia wasn’t theirs to claim. Their generation had not yet arrived at the moment of final redemption. They left the treasure behind — reserved, as it were, for a future time.

What God Promised Abraham About the Plunder

Here is where the story takes a more expansive turn — one that I believe deserves serious prayerful consideration in light of the extraordinary moment we are living through and the miraculous battles taking place as America and Israel bring the Islamic Regime to its knees in Iran.

Nearly four thousand years ago, in what the Bible calls the Covenant of the Parts, God made a series of promises to the patriarch Abraham. He told him that his descendants would suffer as slaves in a foreign land — but that when God finally rescued them, they would not leave empty-handed, but would depart “with great wealth” (Genesis 15:14). The Book of Exodus records the fulfillment: when the Israelites were finally liberated from Egypt, the Egyptians pressed upon them silver and gold and clothing. God’s word proved exact. The wealth of an evil empire was transferred to those it had oppressed.

The ancient sages teach that everything that happened to the Israelites in Egypt is a template — a harbinger — for the final redemption. The prophet Isaiah goes further, promising that the coming deliverance will be so great that it will completely overshadow the Exodus from Egypt (see Jeremiah 16:14–15), so thoroughly and will surpass what came before.

Why did Israel need gold in the wilderness? Because money enables mission. A nation tasked with being, in Isaiah’s words, “a light unto the nations” cannot fulfill that calling from a position of poverty and dependence. Wealth, when directed toward sacred purpose, becomes a vehicle of divine blessing for the entire world.

Our Purim Moment

We are living through the most consequential Purim in 2,500 years. Once again, a Persian regime — Iran — has openly declared its intention to destroy the Jewish people. Once again, Israel has survived and struck back against what seemed like overwhelming odds. The parallels are not coincidental. They are prophetic.

So what should Israel do with the wealth of its defeated enemies? The Purim story suggests that restraint can itself be a powerful moral statement — demonstrating to the watching world that this war is about justice, not plunder. Going after Iran’s oil reserves would hand our adversaries a ready-made narrative: that America and Israel were motivated all along by resource acquisition rather than the righteousness of self-defense.

And yet. The other strand of Scripture — the promise to Abraham, the wealth of Egypt, the prophetic vision of final redemption — suggests that there may come a moment when claiming the resources of a defeated evil regime is not only permissible but providential. Not as an act of greed, but as the transfer of resources from those who used wealth to fund global terrorism to those who would use it to build, heal, and illuminate.

Perhaps that time is approaching. Perhaps the pirate’s booty that Mordechai and Esther left unclaimed in Persia 2,500 years ago is still waiting — reserved for the generation that will finally complete what they began.

From Siege Mentality to Mission Mentality

In my book “Universal Zionism”, I argue that Israel is now transitioning from a defensive posture — the centuries-long siege mentality of a people simply trying to survive — to something bolder: a mission mentality, in which the Jewish state steps forward as an active force for good in the world. This is the moment the prophets envisioned. This is what the return to the land was always meant to enable.

The events since October 7th have accelerated this transition in ways no one predicted. Israel’s resilience, its moral clarity in the face of barbarism, and the global realignment it has catalyzed — with friends and enemies now revealed with startling clarity — all point toward a new chapter in the ancient story.

Whether or not Iran’s oil becomes part of that chapter, one thing seems clear: we are not simply reenacting the Purim of the past. We are writing its sequel. And if the pattern of Scripture holds, the ending will be even more glorious than anything Mordechai or Esther could have imagined.

So this Purim, between the costumes and the noise, it is worth asking: is this the generation that finally goes back to Persia to claim what was left behind?