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:

Today Prime Minister Netanyahu confirmed that the explosions that blew two holes in an Israeli-owned cargo ship on Friday were the work of Iran. The incident was followed by airstrikes on military targets in the vicinity of Damascus, likely carried out by the IDF—which might have been retaliation, but might also have been routine attempts to curtail the Iranian military buildup in Syria. But irrespective of its military response, Yoav Limor urges Jerusalem to act diplomatically as well: