According to the available statistics. two-thirds of American Jews light candles at least once over the course of the Festival of Lights. Yet Cole Aronson suggests that the story of the Hasmoneans’ victory over an imperial power that wanted to enforce religious conformity—and also over those Jews who wanted to compromise with it—is remembered in very different ways:

If my back-of-the-envelope sociology is correct, two groups of American Jews celebrate Hanukkah for almost entirely different reasons. Orthodox Jews mostly know the full story of Hanukkah. . . . They’re under no illusions about its radically anti-assimilationist character. They find joy in Hanukkah in large part because of what a revered teacher of mine calls Hanukkah’s religious maximalism.

Many non-Orthodox American Jews, in my experience, mostly find joy in Hanukkah because the Jews defeated a mighty oppressor. Victimhood is a prized status. Hanukkah is a weeklong reprieve from the awkwardness of humanity’s oldest national victim occupying the West Bank while running the world’s most advanced military. Like Passover—the other most celebrated Jewish holiday in America—Hanukkah is about the weak winning freedom and justice from the strong.

But this special Jewish burning for justice will die out if decoupled from Jewish particularism. . . . That is, unless we Orthodox choose to leave our comfortable insularity, and persuade our brothers and sisters all over the country that the Lord has not forgotten about them, and still hopes for great things from all of us. Or unless anti-Semitism exiles Jews from the right universities, firms, banks, clubs, schools, and neighborhoods—and the answer to “Why do we remain Jews?” suddenly becomes, “because we have no choice.”

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.