According to the book of Deuteronomy (21:18-21), the “wayward and rebellious son” is to be punished with death for his gluttony, drunkenness, and filial disobedience. The Talmud, in analyzing the passage, raises the bar for conviction so high that, the rabbis assert, no one has ever been executed for this crime and ever will be. Nonetheless, writes Jeffrey Saks, there is something to be learned from the Talmud’s discussion of this case:

[The talmudic sage] Rabbi Yehudah determines that the parents must be of “equal voice,” so that if one of them called on the phone, for example, the [son] wouldn’t be able to tell from the voice alone if it belonged to mom or dad. Since they must be of equal voice, he adds the requirement that the two parents must be equal in height and in appearance. Without these highly unlikely conditions being met, even the most rebellious child in the world would not meet the conditions [for receiving] the death penalty.

What is the meaning of Rabbi Yehudah’s odd requirements? . . . When two parents sound absolutely identical, their message becomes muted—like two sounds of equal wavelength which cancel each other out (as the physicists tell us). Parents must act in tandem, and surely their worldviews and values are best communicated when there is harmony—but rigid ideological uniformity, to the extent that the child cannot differentiate between mother and father, [places the child on] the path to rebellion. . . .

[W]e need a certain degree of parental variety—within a framework of [general] consensus—to avoid the dangers and defects of the wayward and rebellious son. Rabbi Yehudah’s principles point to parental harmony as a middle path between discord and the sounds of silence produced by two parents attempting to educate with only one voice.

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.