I was home last night, working on translating an essay on Toledot, the Torah portion on which we’ll focus on Thursday evening (see below), when Ellie called out from the next room, “ISRAEL ATTACKED IRAN!”

I caught Middle East Forum live online and checked other news outlets. It took me a while to get to sleep last night, and I was up at 5:30 to check the news. An hour later we called our daughter Hannah who, as expected, was mobilized. She “wasn’t far” from her home in Jerusalem, getting acquainted with her fellow reservists at wherever they’d been posted.

Then we spoke with my brother Dan, also in Jerusalem. He said that his wife Tova had cleaned up their shelter (which, considering its age, was woefully inadequate to protect against a missile) and, while she was out, did some yard work.

The guests, including Hannah, whom they were expecting for Shabbat dinner canceled. One couple explained that they would have been more than 20 seconds from a shelter at several points on their walk from and to home.

Dan added that the city was quieter than it has been on Yom Kippur: No traffic, no activity.

Just birds tweeting. He was packing up the now-extraneous food he’d prepared to pack into the freezer. On a podcast from the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Yossi Klein Halevi talked about the surreal quality of what’s unfolding; he’s filled with pride, amazement and, yes, trepidation, as he runs to the supermarket to stock up before Shabbat and finds “half of Israel” also clearing the shelves.

As I write this at 1:00 pm, I’m listening to a webinar from Israel Policy Forum. As it began, a panelist in Israel had to excuse herself because of a siren. A moment later she returned, explaining that it was “just” a siren warning that more consequential sirens are likely to follow.

It is 8:00 pm in Israel.

No one is certain about what happens next. Will Iran collapse? They’ve already announced replacements for the top generals who were assassinated in the attack. Will the authorities double down on “Death to Israel! Death to America!”? The language coming out of what’s left of the government is angry and retributive.

(Amid commendations and condemnations reported in the press, this headline on AP stood out: “Hamas deplores Israel’s attack on Iran.”)

Klein Halevi described Iran’s “doomsday clock,” mounted in Tehran’s Palestine Square, that is counting down to Israel’s obliteration in 2040. He suggests that this is just one sign of the irrationality of Iran’s leadership. Many have questioned the sanity of a government that is obsessed with wiping out a country that is one-fortieth its size, however, that consideration does not lessen the potential threat.

I have not yet seen coverage of any kind of celebration on the streets of Israel. The brilliant devastation of the pager attack on Hezbollah and the strikes on Iran are the result of years of groundwork. Some day, there will likely be movies that lionize those assaults. I also expect that when Israelis watch those movies, they will not cheer as the closing credits roll. Instead, they will be struck dumb by a heightened understanding of what it takes to keep

Israel safe.

shabbat shalom!שבת שלום