Born in Prussia in 1796, Hyman Hurwitz spent much of his adult life in London, where he became a Jewish educator, scholar, poet, and thinker. Hurwitz was also a close friend of the renowned poet and Tory philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Between 1814 and the latter’s death in 1834, the two met almost daily; Coleridge translated some of Hurwitz’s Hebrew poetry into English and collaborated with Hurwitz in producing an anthology of talmudic tales. The two even jointly read a patriotic poem at a London synagogue. Lilach Naishtat Bornstein writes:

Coleridge was in fact quite knowledgeable in Hebrew before he met Hyman Hurwitz. During his adult life, he set aside time for daily study of the Bible, used the Hebrew alphabet as a meditative tool, and treated what he considered the most poetic biblical book, Psalms, as a topic of daily conversation. He objected to interpreting the Bible as a record of historical events, instead seeing it as a fictional work that leaves important room for the imagination, the unconscious, and dreams, blending the concrete and the symbolic.

In his embrace of Hebrew, the poet followed in the path of his father, the Reverend John Coleridge, the great English Hebraist who wrote his dissertation on Judges 17 and 18. . . . Samuel acquired the fundamentals of the Hebrew language during his term of study in Cambridge, even though his teachers were only “tolerable Hebraists.” He considered the Hebrew language “universally, permanently intelligible” and “appropriate to the divine purpose of the sacred scriptures” more than any other language, and he emphasized the basic, concrete, and sometimes visual meanings of Hebrew roots and their derivatives.

Coleridge’s poetry and thinking were strongly influenced by the Hebrew Bible and by other Jewish sources; talmudic and mishnaic homiletics and exegesis, Kabbalah, the creation myth, the account of the defeat of Jerusalem, the Wandering Jew archetype, Abraham’s oak motif, and many others, all appear in his poems. . . . Coleridge saw biblical poetry as a paragon. . . . In his works, he attempted to mimic Hebrew and the flexible Hebrew meter and used it as a source for genre invention and renovation.

On Tuesday, a Hizballah drone attack injured three people in northern Israel. The next day, another attack, targeting an IDF base, injured eighteen people, six of them seriously, in Arab al-Amshe, also in the north. This second attack involved the simultaneous use of drones carrying explosives and guided antitank missiles. In both cases, the defensive systems that performed so successfully last weekend failed to stop the drones and missiles. Ron Ben-Yishai has a straightforward explanation as to why: the Lebanon-backed terrorist group is getting better at evading Israel defenses. He explains the three basis systems used to pilot these unmanned aircraft, and their practical effects:

These systems allow drones to act similarly to fighter jets, using “dead zones”—areas not visible to radar or other optical detection—to approach targets. They fly low initially, then ascend just before crashing and detonating on the target. The terrain of southern Lebanon is particularly conducive to such attacks.

But this requires skills that the terror group has honed over months of fighting against Israel. The latest attacks involved a large drone capable of carrying over 50 kg (110 lbs.) of explosives. The terrorists have likely analyzed Israel’s alert and interception systems, recognizing that shooting down their drones requires early detection to allow sufficient time for launching interceptors.

The IDF tries to detect any incoming drones on its radar, as it had done prior to the war. Despite Hizballah’s learning curve, the IDF’s technological edge offers an advantage. However, the military must recognize that any measure it takes is quickly observed and analyzed, and even the most effective defenses can be incomplete. The terrain near the Lebanon-Israel border continues to pose a challenge, necessitating technological solutions and significant financial investment.