Of all the great Jewish poets of medieval Spain, Judah Halevi was unique in his expressions of dissatisfaction with life in exile, and his yearning for the Holy Land, summed up most famously in his verse, “My heart is in the east while I am in the uttermost west.” Sarah Rindner, having recently left America to settle in Israel—a subject she has written about here—reflects on Halevi’s words, and the response to them of the 20th-century Israeli poet, also bearing the name Yehuda, in light of her own experiences:

In 1967, the poet Yehuda Amichai, whose poems are now nearly synonymous with the modern city of Jerusalem, found himself in the odd position of viewing one of the most momentous turning points in the history of his beloved city, at least partially, from abroad. In response, he penned the opening sequence of the poem cycle “Jerusalem, 1967” in which he riffs on the classic refrain of Judah Halevi. . . . Amichai’s alternate refrain, describing his feelings watching “the silence of his city from afar,” breaks up these two poles into four squares:

This year I traveled a long way
to view the silence of my city
A baby calms down when you rock it, a city calms down
from the distance. I dwelled in longing. I played the hopscotch
of the four strict squares of Judah Halevi:
My heart. Myself. East. West.

In typical fashion, Amichai unfolds a familiar traditional Jewish refrain and fashions it anew. There are not just two poles, East and West, but four, including a heart and a body. East and West here may be states of mind―they may be the distance between Amichai’s budding career as an internationally translated poet and his roots in Jerusalem, or they may be the distance between the Eastern and Western divisions of Jerusalem itself. The hopscotch analogy implies that the relationships among these poles are familiar and fluid, and potentially even playful too.

In the modern world, our bodies do not have to stay in any one place for too long. For a Jew who yearns for Jerusalem while maintaining deep connections abroad, the precise location of our hearts may also be provisional, contingent upon many factors: spiritual, familial, geographical, and cultural. All four quarters are present at all times, but we may skip from one to the other, maybe in a way that almost seems frivolous compared with the limitations we experienced in the past.

Even so, Rindner goes on to suggest, it may be Halevi who can speak more to the modern Jerusalemite.

Last Tuesday, the Houthis—the faction now ruling much of Yemen—said that they intend to renew attacks on international shipping through the Red and Arabian Seas. They had for the most part paused their attacks following the January 19 Israel-Hamas cease-fire, but their presence has continued to scare away maritime traffic near the Yemeni coast, with terrible consequences for the global economy.

The U.S. responded on Saturday by initiating strikes on Houthi missile depots, command-and-control centers, and propaganda outlets, and has promised that the attacks will continue for days, if not weeks. The Houthis responded by launching drones, and possibly missiles, at American naval ships, apparently without result. Another missile fired from Yemen struck the Sinai, but was likely aimed at Israel. As Ari Heistein has written in Mosaic, it may take a sustained and concerted effort to stop the Houthis, who have high tolerance for casualties—but this is a start. Ron Ben-Yishai provides some context:

The goal is to punish the Houthis for directly targeting Western naval vessels in the Red Sea while also exerting indirect pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program. . . . While the Biden administration did conduct airstrikes against the Houthis, it refrained from a proactive military campaign, fearing a wider regional war. However, following the collapse of Iran’s axis—including Hizballah’s heavy losses in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria—the Trump administration appears unafraid of such an escalation.

Iran, the thinking goes, will also get the message that the U.S. isn’t afraid to use force, or risk the consequences of retaliation—and will keep this in mind as it considers negotiations over its nuclear program. Tamir Hayman adds:

The Houthis are the last proxy of the Shiite axis that have neither reassessed their actions nor restrained their weapons. Throughout the campaign against the Yemenite terrorist organization, the U.S.-led coalition has made operational mistakes: Houthi regime infrastructure was not targeted; the organization’s leaders were not eliminated; no sustained operational continuity was maintained—only actions to remove immediate threats; no ground operations took place, not even special-forces missions; and Iran has not paid a price for its proxy’s actions.

But if this does not stop the Houthis, it will project weakness—not just toward Hamas but primarily toward Iran—and Trump’s power diplomacy will be seen as hollow. The true test is one of output, not input. The only question that matters is not how many strikes the U.S. carries out, but whether the Red Sea reopens to all vessels. We will wait and see—for now, things look brighter than they did before.