Deterrence

Things are seldom  what they seem. In a way, that's one of the lessons of the story of Esther and  Purim. Like Esther "hiding" her true identity or Ahasuerus leaving out the fact it was Mordechai, not Haman he wanted to honor, everything we see today seems to have a waiting surprise and plot twist. Or at least a hidden sub-text that we pretend surprises us when it is inevitably revealed. So much seems to follow the very plots we've seen before. So why are we surprised? When Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, we point fingers, assign blame and try to out patriot the other other side. But we never dig deep enough in the text to ask the one question that we should have been asking from the very first day...