While the shtetls of Eastern Europe tended to have populations split roughly evenly between Jews and Gentiles, the Ukrainian town of Berdichev was a mega-shtetl, with Jews constituting some 80 percent of its population for much of its history; it was also larger in absolute numbers than most of the other market towns where Polish and Russian Jews once lived. In the late 18th century, its claim to fame became the presence of a major ḥasidic holy man by the name of Levi Yitzḥak, whose grave has remained a pilgrimage site to this day. Yet, even though the grave’s location has been preserved, only recently has his actual tomb been found. Dovid Margolin explains:

[I]n the first decade of Bolshevik rule [in the Soviet Union], an unrelenting onslaught [on traditional Jewish life] was led by the yevsektsii, the Jewish sections of the Communist party, [which] worked to uproot every vestige of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—confiscating synagogues, beating rabbis, and paving over Jewish cemeteries. The yevsektsii were most powerful in traditionally Jewish areas, and there was no place more Jewish than Berdichev.

“The conversion of the 200-year-old Jewish cemetery of Berdichev into a public park has resulted in a war between religious Jews and policemen and laborers employed in excavating the cemetery and transforming it into a park,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on July 12, 1929. While the city’s rabbinate proclaimed that ancient Jewish remains were being desecrated, “the Communists declare that . . . only the skeletons of horses have been dug up.”

Berdichev’s oldest cemetery was indeed destroyed and is today the city’s central Park Shevchenko. [But] one grave remains—that of a legendary Berdichev rabbi named Liber the Great (d. 1771). Rabbi Levi Yitzḥak, on the other hand, was buried in what was a relatively newer cemetery, destruction of which it seems the Jewish section did not get around to. In 1930, Stalin ordered the yevsektsii disbanded, and by the end of the year Jewish Communists had lost their power in the city.

[It seems that] some time after this episode, to head off the destruction of the rabbi’s grave, observant Jews in Berdichev themselves took down the brick mausoleum surrounding the grave and capped it with pavement and a headstone in order to make it less of a target.

Ron Ben-Yishai, reporting from a visit to IDF forces in the Gaza Strip, analyzes the state of the fighting, and “the persistent challenge of eradicating an entrenched enemy in a complex urban terrain.”

Hamas, sensing the war’s end, is mounting a final effort to inflict casualties. The IDF now controls 65 percent of Gaza’s territory operationally, with observation, fire dominance, and relative freedom of movement, alongside systematic tunnel destruction. . . . Major P, a reserve company commander, says, “It’s frustrating to hear at home that we’re stagnating. The public doesn’t get that if we stop, Hamas will recover.”

Senior IDF officers cite two reasons for the slow progress: meticulous care to protect hostages, requiring cautious movement and constant intelligence gathering, and avoiding heavy losses, with 22 soldiers killed since June.

Two-and-a-half of Hamas’s five brigades have been dismantled, yet a new hostage deal and IDF withdrawal could allow Hamas to regroup. . . . Hamas is at its lowest military and governing point since its founding, reduced to a fragmented guerrilla force. Yet, without complete disarmament and infrastructure destruction, it could resurge as a threat in years.

At the same time, Ben-Yishai observes, not everything hangs on the IDF:

According to the Southern Command chief Major General Yaron Finkelman, the IDF is close to completing its objectives. In classical military terms, “defeat” means the enemy surrenders—but with a jihadist organization, the benchmark is its ability to operate against Israel.

Despite [the IDF’s] battlefield successes, the broader strategic outcome—especially regarding the hostages—now hinges on decisions from the political leadership. “We’ve done our part,” said a senior officer. “We’ve reached a crossroads where the government must decide where it wants to go—both on the hostage issue and on Gaza’s future.”