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.

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.”