When the Russia-Ukraine war began in 2014, the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol saw heavy fighting; when the frontlines stabilized, it found itself just behind them—and its denizens soon grew accustomed to the sound of sporadic artillery fire. This year, Russian forces destroyed Mariupol almost completely. Dovid Margolin writes:

Gone is the city’s theater, where some 300 people were killed in an airstrike in May. Homes, stores, hotels, and parks have likewise disappeared—they, like the streets they once lined, turned to rubble. Mariupol’s lone synagogue was not spared either. Only the facade remains.

But on Saturday evening, workers pulled something out of the debris: the large metal Chanukah menorah that had once graced the synagogue sanctuary. It had somehow survived the intense fires that destroyed the building and was recovered a day before Hanukkah.

“There’s a sense of great emotion in our community,” says Rabbi Mendel Cohen, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Mariupol and the city’s only rabbi since 2005. “The overall feeling is that we are witnessing the idea that ‘a little light dispels much darkness.’”

For years, Cohen’s synagogue had operated out of his modest Jewish community center in Mariupol. Sometime before the war, as Jewish life in the seaside city continued expanding, the rabbi sought bigger premises and rented a large space for a synagogue in a solid building on Prospect Mira in the city center, using the old building for storage and limited programming. Both buildings were destroyed.

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.