In a historical novel with more than a touch of fantasy, Emily Barton imagines that Khazaria—the Central Asian empire whose rulers, according to legend, converted to Judaism in the 8th century CE—survives into the 20th century and is under attack by the Third Reich. The Book of Esther also features a transsexual warrior princess (the protagonist and title character), mechanical horses, and a village of kabbalists who use their magical powers to create an army of golems who will fight the Nazis. In her review of this “imaginative, engrossing, and entertaining” book, Dara Horn writes:

Barton has talent to spare, and while her pacing and tone are occasionally ponderous, her imagination makes the story as addicting as a Jewish Game of Thrones. The novel’s invented world is considerably more persuasive than the characters populating it, but this hardly gets in the way of the adventure. More distinctively, Barton explores religious culture with remarkable warmth. For those familiar with Judaism, one of the book’s unexpected pleasures is just how unexotic these exotic Khazars turn out to be. (I’ve attended many Sabbath dinners like Esther’s, with fewer golems.)

Yet a load-bearing premise like this one, predicated not merely on the Holocaust but on the real-life absence of golems to stop it, demands more than entertainment. . . . Why this story now? . . .

While Barton’s novel is hardly political, you can’t read it without thinking of the almost supernatural resurrection of anti-Semitism that has taken place in recent years and its attendant indignities—one of which is the reduction of a majestic civilization to a degrading public posture of self-defense. The un-cynical purity with which Barton imagines her Jewish kingdom is like a literary Sabbath for those weary of today’s jihadists and Internet trolls. At the book’s ambiguous end, it’s reassuring to remember that in reality this civilization still thrives.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.