The seven-and-a-half-year cycle of Talmud study known as daf yomi (“daily page”), which concluded its thirteenth iteration last week, has grown greatly in popularity in Orthodox, and especially ultra-Orthodox, circles since it was initiated by a Polish rabbi in the 1920s. But not all who commit themselves to the regimen of studying one folio page of the Talmud every day are Orthodox. Benjamin David, the rabbi of a Reform congregation in New Jersey, reflects on successfully completing the daf yomi:

I found the end of each tractate particularly enthralling. . . . Consider the end of Tractate Sotah, for instance, which has the text recount the many iconic values that died as each sage who embodied that value died. With boldness it declares that when Yoḥanan ben Zakkai died, so did wisdom. When Abba Yosi died, so did piety. When Yehudah ha-Nasi died, humility itself died. At the final line of this 49-page tractate, Rabbi Naḥman speaks up, a still, small voice of hopefulness: “Do not fear that fear of sin died, for there is still one who fears sin: me.”

It is this kind of moment that defies all expectations and assumptions regarding Talmud study. At least it did for me. For those who want to believe that it’s a cold text of yesteryear, such moments prove endlessly heartwarming and uplifting.

As my enthusiasm for Talmud study grew, so did my enthusiasm for teaching Talmud. [Students in my] monthly Talmud classes grew in number over the years, maybe because of my own consistently raised eagerness. I was bringing them texts well beyond the obvious, overanalyzed talmudic stories so many have come to love. . . . I brought them little-known nuggets from tractates M’naḥot and Mo’ed Katan, and other less likely tractates, and we loved them together.

While all of this might sound poetic, even inspiring, much of daf yomi is not at all poetic. Pages upon pages devoted to the ancient practice of levirate marriage or entire volumes devoted to the minutiae around animal sacrifices we haven’t done for over 1,500 years. Tractate Z’vaḥim was tough. B’khorot was tougher. These sections of the Talmud begged me to quit, but I never relented. I knew that if I could press on, there would be talmudic gold.

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.