Making use of software that can analyze large collections of interrelated data, scholars of Jewish religious history have begun trying to make maps of the connections among various rabbis. Michael Satlow, who is engaged in one of these projects, explains the specific problem presented by the Talmud that he seeks to address:

The Talmud is full of rabbinic citations, noting which rabbis said what. These citations are often recorded in chains: Rabbi X said that Rabbi Y said that Rabbi Z said something. On one hand, the Talmud seems very concerned with the principle of accurate transmission of statements in the name of their masters. On the other hand, the Talmud itself often admits its confusion about which rabbi actually said something, and variations in the many later manuscripts compound our uncertainty about these attributions. Now, on top of these well-known problems, some scholars suggest that active intervention by the [editors] swept away any hope of recovering accurate attributions.

Working only with the Babylonian Talmud, Satlow and his collaborators have begun to make new sense of these citations, stepping past old debates about the historical accuracy of citations:

While scholars have increasingly come to the conclusion that the ancient rabbis worked in small disciple circles (as opposed, for example, to institutions such as the yeshiva, which only emerge much later), we still have only a vague idea of how those circles interacted and coalesced into something that might be called a “movement,” “class,” or “network.” How was it like, and not like, other historical networks, such as the Roman aristocracy or the Republic of Letters? How robust was it—could knocking out a few key figures lead to the collapse of the entire network? How did information move across it?

We found six such subcommunities, each of which we assigned a different color. . . . Several of these subcommunities contain only one or a few large nodes, which we might expect from a “school” of successive disciple circles. Others are a bit more diffuse, but when sorted again with the same algorithm clearer, clusters often emerge. One of the more interesting results of these sortings for us was that they tended to cluster together rabbis in ways that are plausible. Although the algorithm knew nothing about whether a particular rabbi was Palestinian or Babylonian, for example, it tended to cluster Palestinians and Babylonians separately.

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.