The current Hebrew year, 5782, is shmitah, or the sabbatical year, on which, according to biblical edict, debts are forgiven and the land left to lie fallow. Since the 1st century BCE, observant Jews have used a rabbinic workaround known as prozbul—designed for economies more complex than those of the late Bronze Age—that allows creditors to press their claims even after the seventh year. Drawing on his own experience with massive debt after the 2008 financial crisis tanked his startup, Baruch Sterman examines the meaning of the shmitah, and its modern-day relevance:

I’ve recently been studying the work of Rabbi Isaac ha-Levi Herzog, the first chief rabbi of the state of Israel (both the father of Israel’s sixth president and grandfather and namesake of Israel’s current president), whose great project was to fit the demands of halakhah to the needs of the modern state. . . . Herzog noted that the court could indeed have annulled the cancelation of debts as part of the shmitah-year regulations, but had it done so, “the very core of the mitzvah would be impaired.”

The core of the commandment, according to Herzog, was the recognition that the earth is the Lord’s and that property, debts, and class distinctions are all human constructions. “All the earth becomes a single plain in the holy year,” Herzog writes, “and all the barriers between rich and poor fall away.” Once every seven years, at least ideally, the economic playing field should be leveled, and those trapped in debt should be freed. The prozbul may have been a necessary legal fiction devised to keep an increasingly complex society running smoothly, but Rabbi Herzog realized that [it was] deliberately structured . . . so that every lender still must encounter the revolutionary ideal of the Bible when writing his or her own prozbul.

The seven-day week, seven-year shmitah sequence, and seven rounds of seven years that lead up to the jubilee year, all highlight the cyclical nature of the world. At any moment, the situation in which one finds oneself—financially, physically, emotionally—may be reversed. In the blink of an eye, we may find ourselves going from the one who can give to the one in need, from a CEO on the verge of great success to a supplicant.

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.