In 1896, the Jews of St. Louis, Missouri established an eruv, a legal fiction usually involving string, wire, and posts (and in modern times, telephone and electrical cables) that gives part of a city or neighborhood the status of a single courtyard—allowing the observant to carry items outdoors on the Sabbath. Now there are an estimated 350 eruvin in the U.S. and Canada. The laws governing the eruv are complex; they are usually established in consultation with rabbinic specialists, and require weekly checking and regular maintenance. Merri Ukraincik explains how new technology has transformed this process:

For example, an eruv professional can now determine whether an eruv is kosher or invalid by examining an image of it on his phone. Likewise, he can virtually tour an existing or potential eruv border on Google Street View and use FaceTime to walk a local eruv checker through an easy fix.

About two years ago, a large Jewish community approached the Orthodox Union (OU) with a major concern. It seemed that all the information about its eruv was stored in the head of just one individual. [One of the organization’s rabbis], Ezra Sarna, soon discovered that such a scenario is common in many cities. [So] the OU developed free user-friendly software designed exclusively for eruv professionals.

But, Ukraincik observes, not all problems can have high-tech solutions:

The hands-on work for an eruv builder . . . can be rough and challenging—even risky. Eruv builders might spend Friday afternoon adjusting a wire on a telephone pole at the last minute. They contend with everything from wild animals to blizzards to oncoming traffic.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.