“In a world of radical pluralism,” proclaimed David Brooks in a recent New York Times column, “we are all Jews”—in the sense that all Americans are now members of “creative minorities” in a society that no longer has a single dominant culture. Ira Stoll points to the troubling pedigree of such statements, which can be traced back to Paul’s statement in Galatians 3:19 that, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” As the scholar Jon Levenson explains in his book Inheriting Abraham:

Conversion to Christianity (to use terminology that did not exist in Paul’s time), then, gives Gentiles the status that Jews claimed for themselves: it makes them descendants of Abraham and thus heirs to the promise given him. It does this, moreover, while bypassing the laws of Moses and even the law of circumcision.

Drawing on Levenson, Stoll writes:

Brooks has just published a bestselling book, The Second Mountain, in which he details his personal spiritual journey, including his view that the accounts of Jesus in the Christian Bible “do feel like a completion to me,” and his description of himself as “a wandering Jew and a very confused Christian.” Religion News Service reports that, “When he attends church, he says the Nicene Creed and takes communion.”

Being a Jew merely by being a “creative minority”—but not by believing in one God, attempting to follow the laws of Judaism, or participating and joining in Jewish communal life—is a contemporary version of Paul’s shortcut. Think of how women might react to a New York Times op-ed claiming “we are all women” or how African Americans might react to a New York Times op-ed claiming “we are all black.”

It’s not that one doesn’t appreciate the sentiment or the feeling of having admiring allies, but one has the uneasy feeling that these allies don’t quite get it. They are expanding the definition of the group beyond the definition’s breaking point. . . . [W]hat Brooks means by “Jews” when he writes “we are all Jews” may be something distant from what most Jews mean.

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.