György Spiró’s novel Captivity, recently translated into English, tells the story of a 1st-century CE Roman Jew named Uri who embarks on epic and life-transforming travels to Judea and Alexandria. Much of the book’s strength, writes Adam Kirsch, lies in its vivid and thoroughly researched depictions of ancient life, but it also has a powerful modern resonance:

When Uri himself makes it to Judea, he experiences a very Jewish kind of ambivalence. Exiled, due to a complicated and not very important series of intrigues, to a small village, he witnesses one of the Jews’ triennial pilgrimages to the Temple. He is equally impressed and alienated by their religious enthusiasm: “Could this be my people?” he wonders, seeing the poor villagers with “their skin … ulcerated, their bodies scrawny.” During his time in the village, Uri experiences—and Spiró carefully describes—the incredible hardship of rural life in the Roman empire and indeed for most human beings throughout most of history. Uri proves unable to do any kind of farm work, just as the modern reader would, since he is used to a sedentary and bookish life.

By contrast, when he makes it to Alexandria, Uri feels truly at home in a kind of ancient version of New York City, full of ethnic diversity, commercial activity, and tall buildings. For a moment, it seems as if Alexandria is going to be the answer to Uri’s, and Spiró’s, Jewish question. If Rome is Europe, where the Jews are a despised minority, and Judea is Israel, where they are a pious but parochial majority, then Egypt seems like America, where Greek and Jew live in prosperous harmony. But any reader of Philo knows that this idyll is too good to last, and Uri is present to witness the pogrom against the city’s Jews that Philo chillingly describes in his work Against Flaccus. . . .

There is a deep pessimism or fatalism in this novel of ancient Judaism, as perhaps there has to be, which casts a shadow across Spiró’s exuberant recreations of the Roman empire. Captivity draws you in with its pageant of the classical world, but by the end it also turns out to be a profound meditation on what Judaism meant, and means.

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.