Reflections on the Yom Kippur War: Then. Since. And Today

An older woman who lost her family in the Holocaust appeared in a documentary film called “Numbers” that I watched a few years ago. She recounted the moment when her four-year-old son asked about the numbers on her arm.

Very bad people had put the number on her arm, she told him. He asked her whether there had been Maccabees (Jewish warriors in biblical …