In a recently published collection of essays, Shlomo Riskin—a leading American-born Israeli rabbi—tackles many of the thorniest issues confronting Modern Orthodoxy. David Berger, who has much praise for the book and its author in his review, nevertheless takes issue with Riskin’s attempt to define away the talmudic category of the apikoros, or heretic:

Riskin poses the question “who’s an apikoros?” and essentially responds, “no one.” The argument is that it is wrong to identify anyone as a heretic because it is difficult to define what one is: Maimonides himself was accused of heresy; the Talmud defines heresy by such actions as scorning a scholar, but not by the criterion of unacceptable beliefs; [the early-20th-century sage Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz] said that no one today should be subject to the treatment inflicted on a heretic; and contemporary theological deviationists are generally the product of their education and environment. It is also pragmatically self-defeating to condemn rather than build.

Much of this is, no doubt, correct, but some of it is misleading. The position that heresy should be defined by actions and not beliefs sidesteps the [talmudic passage] (quoted in full by Riskin) which lists a number of beliefs that exclude the one who holds them from the World to Come. While there is much to be said for a tolerant attitude toward contemporary adherents of heretical beliefs, there is great danger in blurring or erasing the category of heresy itself. This essay does not quite do this, but it comes perilously close. The issue is of acute importance nowadays, when we are witness to an assault on the position that beliefs matter at all, and when adherents of positions that are heretical by any historical measure are welcomed—especially in the religious-Zionist community in Israel—as respected Orthodox figures. A religion, certainly an Orthodox version of a religion, requires boundaries.

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.