Around 200 CE, a group of rabbis produced a digest of legal opinions, together with some theological ones, known as the Mishnah. This was the first attempt (or the first attempt that survived) to put what these rabbis called the Oral Torah into writing. At some point, a parallel text, containing alternative opinions, was also put to parchment and given the name Tosefta—Aramaic for “addition.” Michael Satlow considers the oldest extant manuscript of the Tosefta, which once belonged to the Jewish community of the German city of Erfurt:

The Erfurt manuscript is the earliest and best witness to the Tosefta. Yet the Tosefta is itself a somewhat mysterious document. It reads much like the Mishnah, largely following its order. Some parts of it are identical to the Mishnah; others presuppose and comment on passages found in the Mishnah; and yet others seem to precede the Mishnah. While the Mishnah became the base text for two Talmuds (Palestinian and Babylonian), we do not know where, when, or why the Tosefta was redacted as a single document, nor how it was used.

That, though, is only preface to the story of our manuscript, which dates to the 12th century. The manuscript itself is hefty, heavy, and must have been expensive to produce. It is made of large parchment pages dotted with pinholes on the margin, to help the scribe keep a straight line. The scribe was also thrifty enough that when a page ripped, he stitched it back together rather than start a fresh one.

The Tosefta was one of fifteen extant Hebrew manuscripts used by the Erfurt Jewish community. Some of these manuscripts, such as an enormous Bible, are significant works, and there is a long, complex, and bloody history behind their survival. That story, with pogroms, property seizures, and ultimately the seizure of these manuscripts into Christian libraries, encapsulates the story of German Jews in the Middle Ages.

Observing Hizballah’s increasingly effective use of rockets, drones, and anti-missiles against not only the Israeli civilian population but also strategically sensitive targets, Yaakov Lappin argues that the IDF’s campaign of limited strikes and the killing of key commanders is insufficient:

Hizballah’s widespread attack on the north on Wednesday demonstrates that the core threat lies not in any individual commanders but in the substantial firepower array that is entrenched deeply throughout 200 southern Lebanese Shiite villages, as well as in Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley.

Hizballah’s military-terrorist infrastructure and expansive manpower pose the largest conventional threat to Israel. The limitations of targeted strikes as an approach are becoming increasingly evident, as [are those of] IAF’s ongoing campaign to strike at Hizballah weapons-storage centers and command posts in a limited fashion, in line with the Israeli war cabinet’s directive.

Yet, short of invading southern Lebanon, Jerusalem has few other options. Lazar Berman argues that the time is far from ripe for an all-out war:

The challenges the IDF would face in Lebanon would be orders of magnitude greater [than in Gaza]. Hizballah has far more advanced anti-tank weapons and attack drones. Fighting in prepared defenses in open territory, they would be able to target IDF forces from kilometers away.

The IDF could take every square inch of territory ten—even twenty—kilometers from the border, and Hizballah would still be able to rain rockets down across Israel. . . . And it would end in a ceasefire agreement, one that residents of the north are unlikely to put much stock in.