In Anger and Forgiveness, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum criticizes Judeo-Christian notions of repentance and forgiveness on the grounds that they for place excessive emphasis on formulaic statements and rituals. Shalom Carmy, although acknowledging the merit of “some of the pitfalls she sees in the standard framework of forgiveness and atonement,” takes others of her assumptions to task:

[W]hen Nussbaum calls religious repentance “anxious and joyless,” I don’t recognize the experience as my own. To be sure, the classical Jewish texts she [cites] are prescriptive or hortatory. They set down formal requirements for contrition, repentance, and atonement, devoting relatively little attention to particular interpersonal dynamics. If this is all there is to it, one is left with mere ritual; abrupt, often sullen apologies; and perfunctory, compulsory grants of pardon, like the shallow remorse expected of small children. But when we put away childish things, we discover that legal requirements create the room for a variety of fine-tuned realizations. . . .

Ritual, in fact, provides a structure for the sorts of deeply human encounters Nussbaum cherishes. People who are graceful in apology and, even more so, people who are gracious in forgiving devote enormous attention to preparing encounters of reconciliation, seeking the right words and the right moment for those words, trying to anticipate obstacles and unexpected sensitivities, working hard to minimize the unavoidable pain, embarrassment, and awkwardness on all sides. . . . As with music, the moral and spiritual beauty of genuine reconciliation looks effortless because this difficult and often painful feat is the result of relentless preliminary work.

Is this dependence upon ritual, formulas, and law “anxious”? Yes, in the sense that all creativity that really matters is anxious, precisely because we cannot predict the other person’s response or even micromanage our own. Anxious, because the risk of failure is inseparable from the task of getting it right. Anxious, because the difficulties Nussbaum warns about may doom to failure our efforts to apologize and to forgive, no matter how punctilious our conformity to the law.

This is all the more true today. Our therapeutic and politicized society preserves only jumbled fragments of religious practice. Alienated from their roots in man’s relationship to God, apology, confession, and other instruments of healing and redemption are more and more likely to succumb to the flaws she detects.

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.