One of the perennial questions asked by scholars of the great 17th-century philosopher Benedict Spinoza is what, and how much, to make of the Jewish upbringing he thoroughly rejected. Yitzhak Melamed, a philosophy professor who has similarly distanced himself from his ultra-Orthodox upbringing, has written a forceful reinterpretation of Spinoza’s thought that seeks to overturn much 20th-century scholarship on the subject. His special target is the late Harry Austryn Wolfson, himself a “talmudic prodigy turned unbeliever,” who discerned a talmudic mind at work in Spinoza’s thought processes. In his review of Melamed’s book, Michah Gottlieb wonders if the two former yeshiva students turned scholars have something in common (free registration required):

While Melamed rejects Wolfson’s interpretation of Spinoza, . . . he does intimate that he shares a kinship with Wolfson in a different respect. In his acknowledgments, [for instance], Melamed refers to his own numerous discussions of [Spinoza] since emigrating from the ultra-Orthodox “holy city of Bnei Brak.” . . .

On close inspection, one can discern a talmudic sensibility that informs Melamed’s approach to Spinoza, albeit one that differs from Wolfson’s. Like Wolfson, Melamed explores how Spinoza uses key philosophical sources through careful textual analysis and dialectical argument. But while Wolfson’s dialectic was more internal to Spinoza and his purported sources—asking why and how Spinoza departed from his medieval predecessors—Melamed’s dialectic is usually directed at a prominent modern interpretation of Spinoza. . . .

If Wolfson’s approach was akin to that of the [latter] talmudic sages in relation to their mishnaic predecessors, Melamed’s is more like tertiary medieval Jewish commentators such as Tosafot who defended their interpretations by refuting such prior commentators as Rashi. . . . [T]he level of Melamed’s attention to detail combined with his logical acuity is unusual even among Spinoza scholars and may owe something to his talmudic training.

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.