Not even sirens warning of incoming ballistic missiles from Iran could stop the ultra-Orthodox dancers celebrating the Jewish holiday Purim in a Jerusalem yeshiva, a religious school, on Wednesday, the fifth day of the war with Iran.
The study benches of the hall had been pushed aside, empty bottles of red wine were piling up in the corner, and a keyboardist in a black gown and sailor cap played music for devoted revelers.
Like many in the ultra-Orthodox part of the city, they paid little heed to Israeli military orders forbidding large gatherings and to get into bomb shelters when sirens go off.
“We don’t need to follow the instructions,” said Yonatan Perlov, a long-bearded 55-year-old teacher, as he took a break from jumping up and down with students ecstatically.
“Only God, not an army, protects us.”
Israeli air defense systems have intercepted multiple rockets, ballistic missiles and drones fired by Iran in retaliation for a joint Israeli-American assault that began on Saturday. Airstrikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and sparked a broader regional conflict.
Iran has been firing on Israel every night since, and some missiles have made it through Israeli air shields, killing at least 10 people earlier this week. Many Israelis have spent the past few days running in and out of underground shelters in the face of incoming fire.
Most Jewish communities — religious and secular — celebrate Purim, and families across the country who didn’t want to give up on the festivities chose to bring the holiday traditions into their protected areas.
In a Tel Aviv public shelter on Tuesday, a crowd of hundreds dressed up in colorful costumes listened to a reading of the portion of the Bible that tells the events commemorated during Purim: the deliverance of the Jews from a massacre plotted by an adviser to the king of Persia, where today’s Iran is.
In the ultra-Orthodox part of Jerusalem, some find mystical significance in the fact that a war with Iran is unfolding during Purim.
“In the same way that the Iranians failed to kill us then,” said Yoel Nayot, 20, standing outside a study hall turned party venue, “they will now fail again.”
He said this was the second day in a row he has been mostly intoxicated — drinking to the point where one cannot distinguish between good and evil is another tradition of the holiday
In the courtyard of the center of the Karlin community, a Hasidic sect, men and even children who looked as young as their early teens were lying on the ground in the street or vomiting on the floor.
The insular religious communities — known for their disregard for state laws — were not the only ones to ignore the safety orders on Wednesday. Jerusalem is famous for Purim street parties that close off entire neighborhoods, and while this year’s celebrations were nothing like that, thousands still filled the city’s downtown dressed as everything from a purple dinosaur to sultry nurses.
But when a siren went off Wednesday evening, many in the city center rushed to a public shelter behind a residential building.
Maayan Vaizman, a 20-year-old horse-riding instructor dressed as a Hasid, wearing a white large skullcap with fake payot, or side-locks, said that she had been celebrating in a building’s lobby.
“I must party,” she said. “Otherwise, I’ll sink into anxiety and depression from the war.”
Natan Odenheimer is a Times reporter in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.
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