For a millennium, the way Jews have read the Hebrew Bible has been shaped above all by the commentary of Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, known by the acronym Rashi, who lived in France from about 1040 until 1105. In standard editions, Rashi’s gloss on Psalms 2:1 begins, “Our rabbis interpreted this passage as referring to the king Messiah.” This reading, however, appears to be the work of medieval Christian censors; the original likely began, “Many of the students of Jesus interpreted. . . .” Naturally, Rashi rejects this interpretation, found in the New Testament book of Acts, in favor of a more literal reading.

Mordechai Z. Cohen argues that Rashi frequently, although not always so explicitly, engages in exegetical polemic with Christianity throughout his Bible commentary, and especially in his commentary on the Psalms:

In medieval Latin Christendom, the Psalms were highly beloved, with commentators interpreting them as prophecies about Christ and the Church. Aware of this prevailing interpretation, Rashi often deviates from the plain meaning of the text to read the Psalms as a reflection of the Jewish people’s experience and suffering in his own time.

It is becoming increasingly accepted that Rashi reacted polemically to Christian beliefs and Bible interpretation, and that, throughout his commentaries, he was implicitly refuting the Christian claim that God had rejected Israel. He thus made the Bible a vehicle for upholding the faith of the Jewish people in their dark exile in Christian Europe.

In his endeavor to counter Christian exegesis, Rashi . . . transforms Psalms from a book about King David’s personal supplications into a source of religious guidance and solace to his coreligionists in their time of despair. In Rashi’s opinion, King David wrote the psalms prophetically about Israel “in exile”—the exile of his own time.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.