In the late 1960s, a Jewish meat merchant in Niagara Falls purchased Harry Houdini’s personal collection of paraphernalia and memorabilia from a magician known as the Amazing Dunninger, opened the Houdini Magical Hall of Fame, and put it on display. The merchant’s son, Jerry Muller, reviews a biography of the great escape artist, who was born in Budapest and was the son of rabbi.

While it lasted, the museum brought our family into contact with a stream of personalities from the world of magic. From the older generation, there was Dunninger himself, who had performed for American presidents, and Al Flosso (actually Albert Levinson), the owner of the most famous magic shop in the United States. Among the younger generation were the escape artist David Copperfield (David Seth Kotkin) and the master of close-up magic, Ricky Jay (Richard Jay Potash). One couldn’t help but notice that many of them were Jewish. Even James Randi, who was not Jewish, gave off a Yiddish vibe, probably from having consorted with Jews for much of his professional life. That association of Jews with stage magic was even more true in Houdini’s day.

Houdini himself was the founder and president of the Rabbis’ Sons Theatrical Benevolent Association, a philanthropical society that brought together the sons of rabbis and cantors in the theatrical world. Its vice president was Al Jolson (Asa Yoelson), its secretary, Irving Berlin (Israel Baline).

At the height of his career, Harry Houdini was among the most famous Jews in the world. [And] if his Jewish practice was thin, his attachments were not. Wherever he was, Houdini made a point of saying kaddish on his father’s yahrzeit. He purchased a tract at the Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, where he had his mother and father buried, with room for him and some of his siblings.

And the reason Houdini excelled may not be so different from the reasons Jews distinguished themselves in other new fields of endeavor, such as photography or, most famously, film:

Perhaps the best way to think of Houdini is as an entrepreneur in the sense developed by his contemporary, the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter. Usually, when we think of entrepreneurs, we have in mind people like my father: people with an eye for the opportunity to find new or profitable uses for existing resources and a willingness to assume risk. Houdini had those qualities, to be sure. But Schumpeter’s entrepreneur does more. He breaks out of the routine of economic life, in which profits are made by filling the gap between demand and supply by creating a new product that has no rivals (at least in the mind of his customers). In doing so, he creates a monopoly and can rake in much higher gains.

Although Houdini had been a good magician, his talents were not unrivaled. So he created a whole new category of entertainer: the escape artist.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.