Aviya Kushner, the child of a Bible scholar, grew up in an observant Jewish home where the Tanakh was read and discussed on a daily basis. When, as an adult, she first encountered the King James Bible and its non-Hebrew-speaking readers, she was surprised—even shocked—by what she found. The result of that encounter is her recent book, The Grammar of God, an idiosyncratic exploration of biblical language and how it shapes readings of the text. Sarah Rindner writes in her review (free registration required):

Kushner . . . discusses how the gendered nature of the Hebrew language is difficult to render in gender-neutral English. In Hebrew, on the third day of creation, a feminine earth sprouts forth her grass, va-totsei ha-arets desheh, alongside with the masculine seed that yields another form of grass, eisev mazria zera. This delicate balance between feminine and masculine is ignored in most translations. . . . Such observations are interesting on aesthetic grounds, but they also demonstrate the way in which the specific words employed by the Bible are inextricably linked to its worldview.

While Kushner’s analysis is creative and intelligent, not all of her biblical interpretations would withstand the test of scholarly inquiry. . . . [She] is more convincing when she discusses the way even the best translations obscure the crucial role of names and naming in the Bible.

Lines such as “And Adam called his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living” . . . are technically incoherent in English. . . . In Hebrew, every time we hear the name of the first woman, “Ḥava,” we also hear ḥayyim, or “life.” In English, the name Eve is essentially meaningless. In the case of Adam, he is named in the verse “And the Lord formed man [adam] from the dust of the earth [adamah].” Translating adam as “man,” or even “Adam the man,” necessarily obscures the way this biblical passage should sound to the listener: “And the Lord formed [a variant of] earth from the dust of the earth.” . . .

Here and elsewhere, Kushner implies that paradigms for translation set by Christian translators have distorted the ways in which modern Jews read the Bible as well. What is earthy in the original Hebrew becomes abstract and “spiritualized.”

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.