The protagonist of Dara Horn’s Eternal Life is a Second Temple-era Jewish woman cursed with eternal life. Similarly, the protagonist of Sarah Perry’s Melmoth is a Jewish woman from the same time but, in her case, fated to wander the earth for eternity as punishment for witnessing Jesus’ resurrection and then denying she did so. Michael Weingrad notes a singular difference in how the two books address their shared central question of “why go on?”

Horn [considers]—and this is what makes her tale so distinctive—not the value of an individual life but the determination to be fruitful and multiply, to continue the Jewish story through our children and our children’s children. Horn shows that the will to enlarge a family is the deepest expression of faith not only in the divine but in the human, too. As contemporary demography suggests, when that faith weakens, birthrates fall. Human concern retreats to the shape and duration of the individual’s life. The import of Horn’s book for our moment, then, is not [her protagonist] Rachel’s longevity but her natality. . . .

[By contrast], Perry’s wraith-like wanderer is an eternal witness to human cruelty with none of the consolations of religious belief. The subjects of her visitations are bystanders, and sometimes worse, to the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, Christian religious persecution, violent misogyny, the deportation of illegal immigrants, and the criminalization of euthanasia. Call it progressive gothic.

Like Horn’s novel, Perry’s asks: why go on? But here the question means, why go on when humanity is so ugly? Why go on when each of us is so implicated in the injustices of the world? . . .

I couldn’t help being struck by the fact that not one of the half-dozen or so characters visited by Perry’s [protagonist] has children. Some are married, some elderly, but none, it seems, is a parent. Perry’s novel seems to warn of the despair that accrues from witnessing the world without a vantage point larger than the self. Horn’s is about a certain hopeful yearning for the world, a hope that in some sense is our children.

In an age of jet planes, high-speed trains, electric cars, and instant communication, it’s easy to forget that maritime trade is, according to Yuval Eylon, more important than ever. As a result, maritime security is also more important than ever. Eylon examines the threats, and opportunities, these realities present to Israel:

Freedom of navigation in the Middle East is challenged by Iran and its proxies, which operate in the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf, and recently in the Mediterranean Sea as well. . . . A bill submitted to the U.S. Congress calls for the formulation of a naval strategy that includes an alliance to combat naval terrorism in the Middle East. This proposal suggests the formation of a regional alliance in the Middle East in which the member states will support the realization of U.S. interests—even while the United States focuses its attention on other regions of the world, mainly the Far East.

Israel could play a significant role in the execution of this strategy. The Abraham Accords, along with the transition of U.S.-Israeli military cooperation from the European Command (EUCOM) to Central Command (CENTCOM), position Israel to be a key player in the establishment of a naval alliance, led by the U.S. Fifth Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain.

Collaborative maritime diplomacy and coalition building will convey a message of unity among the members of the alliance, while strengthening state commitments. The advantage of naval operations is that they enable collaboration without actually threatening the territory of any sovereign state, but rather using international waters, enhancing trust among all members.