In June, construction workers making improvements to a dam in the Isar River—which flows through the city of Munich in southeastern Germany—discovered remains of the city’s synagogue, which was destroyed by the Nazis. Paul Kirby writes:

They uncovered columns from the synagogue and a stone tablet showing some of the Ten Commandments. . . . There had been no sign of the building since it was torn down in June 1938, after Hitler demanded its removal as an “eyesore.” Five months later, Jews, synagogues and Jewish-run businesses were attacked across Nazi Germany in the deadly November pogrom widely known as Kristallnacht.

Rubble from the historic building is thought to have been submerged in the Isar River since it was used to rebuild a weir eleven years after World War II. The stone tablet originally came from above the ark (containing the Torah) on the eastern wall of the synagogue, which was one of Munich’s most famous pre-war landmarks. The old site is now covered by a Karstadt department store.

The Leonhard Moll building company that destroyed the synagogue had apparently stored the rubble on its site west of Munich until 1956. Some 150 tons were then dumped in the river to renovate the big Grosshesseloher weir, mainly from the synagogue but also from buildings bombed during the war.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.