In 1907, Ḥaim Naḥman Bialik paid a visit to Sholem Aleichem, then living in Geneva, and on his departure forgot to take his slippers. His host wrote him a characteristically playful letter:

You should know I have some greetings to pass on to you, can you guess from whom? From your shoes; yes, from your slippers. The morning after your departure from Switzerland, I got up, as usual, quite early and, as usual, I bent down looking for my shoes under my bed. I have a look—and find a pair of shoes! Completely unfamiliar shoes, checkered slippers with leather tips. I examine the shoes—quite good shoes, brand new! Whose shoes are they? Long story short: they are Bialik’s shoes! How did Bialik’s shoes get here? He probably forgot them? Or perhaps he left them here for me as a gift?

Anyway they caused quite a commotion in the house: Shoes this! Shoes that! First along comes [my daughter] Tissy, who made the claim that the shoes should belong to her; her Berkovitsh got on really well with Bialik, so she should get the shoes. The second to come along was my Lyala, the one who is studying medicine: it’s only fair, she said, that she should get the shoes. Why? It goes like this: she has no slippers. She said she’d really wanted to buy new shoes for some time now. Emma, the third, said that the shoes may as well go to her, because of course she has no shoes! The smallest, Marusi, joins in claiming that her heart is not made of stone and that she too has a right to shoes. Numtshik, hearing that we are talking about shoes and without even waiting to find out what shoes we are talking about, cries out: “Mama, I want shoes!”

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.”