“Poem without End,” by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, opens with the image of an “old synagogue” housed inside a “brand-new museum.” Using this image as her point of departure, Sarah Rindner explores the place of the Jewish religion in Amichai’s work:

For Amichai, the synagogue is not merely a relic from an outdated past; rather, it lives [on], and he lives inside it. Moreover, the synagogue lives within him and so on, creating the never-ending cycle of the poem’s title.

Amichai, famously, identified as secular but grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home and tirelessly engaged with Jewish history, rituals, and texts. It is easy, then, to understand his connection with the world of the synagogue, but the significance of the “museum” that “dwells within his heart” is less clear. . . .

[P]erhaps Amichai is invoking the museum as a representation of “high” culture, a place in which religious belief and practice are concretized and turned into art. [If so, then] it is not just [that] the Jewish faith is embedded in the poet’s heart, but that [Judaism] is also somehow itself linked to artistic or literary expression. . . . This engagement with Judaism via art becomes inextricable from Amichai’s own self as a Jew and a poet, and is then folded back into the substance of the religion itself, as represented by the synagogue.

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.