While some thinkers have seen inherent tension between faith and science and others have seen them as separate but complementary perspectives on the world, Rabbi Moshe Tendler—who died last month at the age of ninety-five—saw the two as working together, in a quintessentially Jewish fashion. He was best known for applying new medical knowledge to the thorniest questions of Jewish law, and applying Jewish law to new medical technologies. David M. Weinberg writes:

Tendler was a professor of microbiology and Jewish medical ethics at Yeshiva University, a distinguished clinical cancer researcher, one of America’s leading bioethicists, and a president of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists. . . . Simultaneously, he was a yeshiva dean, a community rabbi in Monsey, New York for over five decades, and an unassailable expert in halakhah (Jewish law).

Tendler also was the essential, accessible “rabbi-doctor” pastoral guide for thousands of Jews in times of medical crisis. Every day, he fielded dozens of calls from around the world about complicated issues of Jewish law and medicine, especially issues relating to abortion, artificial insemination, contraception, end-of-life issues, organ transplantation, and the definition of death.

As Weinberg notes, there are many learned Jews today who are also accomplished scientists, and some are even Nobel-prize winners, but

none was as uniquely positioned to move the needle of the appreciation for science in the religious world and of the respect for religion among his fellow scientists as was Tendler. He empowered Jews everywhere to value the wonderful and complex interface between science and religion, and he demonstrated the value of this fusion for the non-Jewish world too.

Torah-educated students, [Tendler believed], should derive an important conclusion from viewing a human cell under a microscope, . . . the palpable sensation of encountering God as the creator of life. Just as, [a midrash teaches that] the patriarch Abraham recognized God when he viewed the stars in the sky, we also should recognize that He created this world through our observation of the microscopic human cell.

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.