On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews traditionally use a special prayer book known as a maḥzor. The Jewish Weekly provides a timeline of the major U.S. maḥzorim, beginning with the Reform movement’s edition published in 1894:

First published in the 1890s and slightly revised periodically for decades, this maḥzor and the accompanying Shabbat and daily prayer book [the Union Prayer Book] came shortly after the Reform movement’s landmark 1884 Pittsburgh Platform. In accordance with that document, it excised references to the messiah, the future ingathering of Jewish exiles in Israel, and other ideas deemed insufficiently modern. The Union Prayer Book was a definitive ingredient of 20th-century classical Reform—its King James-style English was stentorian [and] its fragments of Hebrew few and far between; it rejected particularism in theology, while embracing Protestantism aesthetically.

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.