Reviewing an exhibition of 20th-century Anglo-Jewish art, David Herman notes two very different trends (with pictures):

The . . . artists who were born around 1890 and emerged just before World War I, [known as the] Whitechapel Boys—including Mark Gertler, David Bomberg, Jacob Kramer, and Isaac Rosenberg—were all sons of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Pale. They were drawn to traditional Jewish subjects: for example, Gertler’s Rabbi and Rabbitzin (1914), Kramer’s Day of Atonement (1919), and Bomberg’s Ghetto Theatre (1920). . . .

What is striking, [however], about the second wave [of Jewish artists], who dominate this exhibition—Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied central Europe, [including] refugees who came as children like Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach—is how they avoided Jewish subjects. No images of Judaism, almost no traces of the Holocaust, hardly any engagement with Israel. Until recently, most postwar work by Jewish artists has avoided obviously Jewish subjects. But there is nevertheless something dark and troubling about the solitary figures by Freud, the urban landscapes and thick black swirls of charcoal by Auerbach and [Leon] Kossoff. To use David Sylvester’s phrase, these works by Jewish artists are “the art of an aftermath.”

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.