October 27 marked the third anniversary of the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history. The occasion was accompanied by the publication of a thorough account of the massacre and its aftermath, written by the journalist Mark Oppenheimer. In his review, Jonathan Sarna praises this “detailed and well written” book for correcting many widespread misconceptions about the shooting, as well for delving into the nature of the Squirrel Hill Jewish community. But Sarna also points to some failings:

Oppenheimer . . . loves unorthodox characters. For instance, . . . Oppenheimer . . . portrays Keshira haLev Fife (née Sarah Gross), who bills herself as a kohenet [i.e., a female member of the priestly caste]. “She is a Jew of color, she can sing, she calls herself a priestess, she’s smart, she holds a crowd,” he gushes. . . . By contrast, the critical if less colorful work performed in the wake of the tragedy by the Jewish Federation director Jeffrey Finkelstein, Rabbi Aaron Bisno of Temple Rodef Shalom, and many of the community’s Orthodox and Chabad rabbis largely goes unrecognized here.

Oppenheimer exclaims that Squirrel Hill is unique, “the oldest, most stable, most internally diverse Jewish neighborhood in the United States.” That is an exaggeration: the Jewish community of Brookline, Massachusetts, is about the same age and no less diverse; the Jewish community of Lower Manhattan is much older. Nor is Squirrel Hill truly stable. Where once it was home to over half of the city’s Jews, today . . . that number is 30 percent. By contrast, 44 percent of the community’s Jews have moved out to the suburbs.

The membership of Tree of Life Synagogue, [where the shooting took place], as a result, plummeted from 850 families in 1995 to fewer than 250 in 2017. . . . Were it not for the Orthodox Jews, who continue to live within walking distance of their synagogues, the Squirrel Hill Jewish community would have shrunk much further. Even the Orthodox, however, have begun moving. . . . The stability that Oppenheimer posits is largely illusory.

Similarly illusory is his assertion . . . that Pittsburgh is “perhaps the least anti-Semitic city in the country.” Regular readers of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle know better. On March 1, 2000, for example, a Pittsburgh gunman named Ronald Taylor shot and killed three people in nearby Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. Anti-white and anti-Semitic writings were found in his home. . . .

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.