Matti Friedman reminisces about Shlomo Mousaieff, who died last week at the age of ninety-two:

Shlomo Moussaieff . . . will be remembered as a purveyor of jewels to the rich and famous and as one of the world’s foremost collectors of biblical antiquities. I will remember him as one of the most enigmatic and fascinating people I have ever interviewed.

The Herzliya hotel suite where Moussaieff spent much of his time was an Ali Baba’s cave: Canaanite oil lamps, Babylonian curse bowls on the coffee table, a pair of bronze lions with ivory eyes. Behind an unremarkable poster leaning against a wall was an inscribed tablet that came, he said, from the land of Sheba. . . .

Moussaieff was born in 1923 to an important Jerusalem family with roots in the Central Asian city of Bukhara. He was one of twelve children. A dyslexic and a failure in school, he incurred the wrath of his father and ran away from home as a teenager, living on the streets for a time. The persona he acquired then stayed with him: he was a multimillionaire who lived in the toniest part of London, but he put on no airs. He was a merchant, a street-brawler, and a Jew. He seemed proud of all three. . . .

By his own count, his collection included 60,000 pieces. His goal, he said, was to amass physical evidence proving the accuracy of the biblical narrative, and he disdained scholars and archaeologists whose work undermined that idea.

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.