This week’s Torah reading of Va’etḥanan contains the first paragraph of the Sh’ma prayer, which includes the verse, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might”—a commandment hard to reconcile with the modern notion of love as an uncontrollable feeling. Drawing from his recent book, The Love of God, Jon D. Levenson notes several ancient Near Eastern treaties requiring a vassal to love his king, or even a king to love his vassal, and suggests that the earliest readers of this passage might have found such an obligation much easier to accept. But he also cautions against pushing this reading too far:

Remember the rhetorical situation [of this passage]: Deuteronomy claims to be confronting a stiff-necked and inveterately rebellious people with the need to reenter and renew covenant (9:7, 24, 13; 31:27). . . . [The text] must elicit in [its] hearers the motivation to make a profound change. . . . Emphasizing God’s love for Israel and Israel’s correlative (but sadly neglected) obligation to love God makes perfect sense in this context.

Levenson further points out that later on in the same Torah reading, when speaking of God’s love for His people, the text uses not the generic term for love but ḥashak, to “set one’s heart upon,” a word which often carries a plainly erotic connotation:

[To judge from the use of this verb it seems clear that], along with the obligations of a covenantal suzerain, God’s love for Israel has a passionate character analogous to human sexual eros.

The chosenness of Israel appears in a different light when it is viewed as the result of such passion on God’s part. Usually, the issue is put into a framework of justice, with . . . detractors arguing that the choice [of Israel] was and is unfair, an act of injustice toward the unchosen. But love does not map so easily onto justice.

The fact that you love your husband or wife in a very special sense does not imply an injustice toward other men and women. Nor does it imply that, by objective criteria, those other individuals do not surpass your beloved in various respects. It implies, rather, that the two of you have a unique personal bond that resists universalization and rationalization.

On Tuesday, a Hizballah drone attack injured three people in northern Israel. The next day, another attack, targeting an IDF base, injured eighteen people, six of them seriously, in Arab al-Amshe, also in the north. This second attack involved the simultaneous use of drones carrying explosives and guided antitank missiles. In both cases, the defensive systems that performed so successfully last weekend failed to stop the drones and missiles. Ron Ben-Yishai has a straightforward explanation as to why: the Lebanon-backed terrorist group is getting better at evading Israel defenses. He explains the three basis systems used to pilot these unmanned aircraft, and their practical effects:

These systems allow drones to act similarly to fighter jets, using “dead zones”—areas not visible to radar or other optical detection—to approach targets. They fly low initially, then ascend just before crashing and detonating on the target. The terrain of southern Lebanon is particularly conducive to such attacks.

But this requires skills that the terror group has honed over months of fighting against Israel. The latest attacks involved a large drone capable of carrying over 50 kg (110 lbs.) of explosives. The terrorists have likely analyzed Israel’s alert and interception systems, recognizing that shooting down their drones requires early detection to allow sufficient time for launching interceptors.

The IDF tries to detect any incoming drones on its radar, as it had done prior to the war. Despite Hizballah’s learning curve, the IDF’s technological edge offers an advantage. However, the military must recognize that any measure it takes is quickly observed and analyzed, and even the most effective defenses can be incomplete. The terrain near the Lebanon-Israel border continues to pose a challenge, necessitating technological solutions and significant financial investment.