Even those who profess not to believe in the divine or the supernatural, writes Peter Berger, can sometimes find themselves confronted by a feeling that something beyond the realm of rational explanation is taking place. As Berger puts it, these sensations occupy a spectrum that includes “what I feel when I first hear the strange noise in the attic, when I hear it every midnight accompanied by Gregorian chanting, and when an angel appears in my bedroom and addresses me in sonorous Latin.” He goes on to describe the “distinctive mix of fascination and fear” that is part and parcel of religiosity, and an experience of his own:

[My wife and I] were living in Brooklyn, and often had to drive to and from LaGuardia airport on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The route goes through Williamsburg, which has one of the densest concentrations of ḥasidic Jews in the country. A number of bridges crosses the BQE. . . . One day I was driving home from having dropped someone at LaGuardia [Airport]. There was a strong wind. Suddenly a large, typically ḥasidic hat flew off one of the bridges and landed right in front of my car. It was a shtrayml, a velvet and fur concoction imitating the headgear of Renaissance Polish noblemen (it can be ordered online for about $600).

My options speeded in my head. It would have been very dangerous to brake suddenly at the speed I was going. I would have braked for a person, but surely not for a hat! When I arrived at home, I said to my wife: “Something very strange happened just now—I drove over a ḥasidic hat!” A few weeks later, a statistically improbable event: the scene repeated itself, same spot on the BQE, same type of hat. I drove over that one, too. I was scheduled to give some lectures in Jerusalem. I had the eerie thought that a third hat was waiting for me there.

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.