A group of Israeli musicians has been performing the sacred and secular work of Salomone Rossi, who composed music both for the synagogue and to entertain the dukes of Mantua. Rossi, a product of heightened cultural interaction between Jews and Christians in Renaissance Italy, introduced elements of modern European music into the Jewish liturgy and was himself a great musical innovator. Geoffrey Clarfield explains:

Three years before [Claudio] Monteverdi, in his madrigals, Rossi pioneered the use of the basso continuo part. In 1607 his compositions featured the first trio sonatas to have ever appeared in Europe. He probably invented the form. We must remember, then, that Rossi was just one, even if he was the best, of a significant number of Italian Jews who were masters of and contributors to the classical music of the time. . . . During the last few years of Rossi’s life, the Jews of Italy and, later, almost all Jews of Western Europe were confined to ghettos. His last pieces were written in Hebrew and correspond to that time when he and his family were moved to the ghetto of Mantua. This is his famous collection called the Songs of Solomon . . . referring (in a typical Renaissance play on words) to himself, the composer, not the ancient Israelite king. They are the first musical rendering of the Hebrew Psalms known to us in the European polyphonic tradition. They were designed to be interspersed in the synagogue liturgy of his coreligionists in Mantua and Venice.

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.