Born in Casablanca but raised and educated in Israel, the artist Jacob El Hanani has lived most of his life in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood, which when he arrived was a leading center of artistic minimalism. Adam Kirsch describes El Hanani’s work, and the Jewish influences that shaped it:

Jacob El Hanani often uses Hebrew letters in his work, though he is neither a mystic nor a scribe. His abstract minimalist drawings conjure wavering networks and textures through the accretion of minute, hand-drawn lines. . . . While Jewish themes and titles appear in the work of other minimalists such as Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, El Hanani’s upbringing gives him access to a tradition that runs deeper than the occasional allusion.

Circle-Drawer (Ḥoni ha-M’aggel), which is one of El Hanani’s most ambitious and profound works, was completed just last year. From a distance, the canvas looks like a wash of grays, delicately transitioning between shades like patches of cloudy sky. Seen more closely, it reveals itself as an enormously complex mesh of tiny circles. Hand drawn, like all of El Hanani’s work, these circles are not perfectly round—not ball bearings from a machine but packed cells seen under a microscope.

The title, however, opens up a new, specifically Jewish dimension of meaning. Ḥoni ha-M’aggel—in English, Ḥoni the Circle-Drawer—is the subject of a famous, theologically provocative story in the Talmud. During a serious drought, Ḥoni issued a challenge to God: drawing a circle around himself in the dirt, he declared, “I take an oath by Your great name that I will not move from here until you have mercy upon Your children.” When a little rain began to fall, Ḥoni complained that God wasn’t sending enough; when the rain grew dangerously strong, he complained that it was too much. Finally, God got it right, and the rain continued until Ḥoni told God to stop.

What does El Hanani mean by titling his own circle drawing after Ḥoni? Is it only a witty allusion? Or is there a deeper similarity between the ancient sage and the modern artist, whose practice also rests on audacity, persistence, and faith? If El Hanani draws countless circles while Ḥoni had to make only one, perhaps it’s a sign that God has become exponentially harder to reach.

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.