We have  friends who like to make special dinners and invite special people to come and speak. Once they invited the first three soldiers able to kiss the Kosel after the Six Day War.

This last time they invited the three Israeli Air Force pilots who flew their F-16s over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq on June 7 1981 to destroy the Osirak atomic reactor.

The pilots in their 50s had brought their wives along because as they shared with us toward the end they were just as interested in hearing what we as religious Jews had to say as we were interested in hearing their story.

Particularly interesting was that they and their wives were as enthusiastic about the mission 32 years later as they had been on that day.

I couldn’t follow all the high-level Hebrew and missed some details but none of the excitement or the message.

They spoke about how they’d prepared for the mission how they studied the terrain for months beforehand. And then they explained that the key to the whole mission was about flying just above the tip of the landscape almost touching mountaintops and when they spoke you could hear and feel the danger.

If I remember correctly one of the plane’s engines wouldn’t start up at the beginning and at the end one of the pilots lost communication. And the trip was 600 miles from Israel’s borders across only enemy territory.

And that the king of Jordan was vacationing at the time and he saw the planes and called Iraq to let them know but somehow the message didn’t get through.

I don’t remember all the details but I do remember the main point — at least the main point for me — that their success depended on flying low. Low enough to keep them what’s called “under the radar.” That’s what brought about those pilots’ highest moment in life.

This idea of flying under the radar really stuck with me especially lately when I’ve been noticing just how many battles are won by laying low.

You see it all the time in history. Whenever we’ve risen up made a tumult and drawn attention to ourselves the outcomes have never been good.

There’s an idea for example that when you’re making a shidduch or a business deal or your child has finally settled into a good learning schedule to keep it quiet keep it low.

I remember once being so excited that one of my children was finally sleeping through the night. So I told someone about it. I think it was the last full night’s sleep I had for a long time.

Once there was this company that was doing really well in competition with the brand name. For years it sat quietly on the shelves next to the “real” brand. Educated consumers knew to reach for it. It was a million-dollar company.

Then one day the owner got a crazy idea. He decided he was going to advertise his little-known brand in all the papers and show how it’s even better or at least as good and half the price of the famous brand. He felt driven to go head-to-head against the big boys.

In three weeks the no-name brand was nonexistent. The big boys hit him with lawsuits and whatever else they do behind the scenes in situations like this.

The little guy could have been happy for the rest of his life if he had understood to just stay under the radar.

Sometimes a little idea takes over our hearts or heads: I want more I want to go higher I’m going head-to-head.

And it’s not easy. It’s hard work. Those pilots planned and mapped and trained and used every corpuscle in their bodies — and for what? To stay under the radar.