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.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”