In this week’s Torah reading of Koraḥ (Numbers 16-18), the title character leads a revolt against Moses, accusing him of corruptly giving his brother Aaron the position of high priest. The rebellion ends when the earth opens and swallows Koraḥ and his closest associates, and a heavenly fire consumes the rest of his followers. Understanding Koraḥ as an “archetypal populist,” Jonathan Sacks seeks to learn from the aftermath of the revolt:

First Koraḥ [claims that] the establishment (Moses and Aaron) is corrupt. Moses has been guilty of nepotism in appointing his own brother as high priest. He has kept the leadership roles within his immediate family instead of sharing them out more widely. Second, Koraḥ presents himself as the people’s champion. “The whole community,” he says, “is holy.” There is nothing special about you, Moses and Aaron. We have all seen God’s miracles and heard His voice. We all helped build His sanctuary. Koraḥ is posing as the democrat so that he can become the autocrat. . . .

For once in his life, Moses acted autocratically, putting God, as it were, to the test [by predicting a miraculous death for the rebels before hearing God’s response]. . . . Yet this dramatic effort at conflict resolution by the use of force failed completely. The . . . people, despite their terror, were unimpressed. “On the next day, however, the whole congregation of the Israelites rebelled against Moses and against Aaron, saying, ‘You have killed the people of the Lord’” (Numbers 17:6). Jews have always resisted autocratic leaders.

What is even more striking is the way the sages framed the conflict. Instead of seeing it as a black-and-white contrast between rebellion and obedience, they insisted on the validity of argument in the public domain. They said that what was wrong with Koraḥ and his fellows was not that they argued with Moses and Aaron, but that they did so “not for the sake of Heaven.” . . .

Judaism does not silence dissent: to the contrary, it dignifies it. This was institutionalized in the biblical era in the form of the prophets [and in] the rabbinic era it lived in the culture of argument evident on every page of the Mishnah, Talmud, and their commentaries. In the contemporary state of Israel, argumentativeness is part of the very texture of its democratic freedom, in the strongest possible contrast to much of the rest of the Middle East.

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.