Last year, Cormac McCarthy released two novels with intertwined plots, The Passenger (named one of Mosaic’s books of the year) and Stella Maris. Their main characters are the brilliant siblings Alice and Bobby Western, whose father was a Manhattan Project physicist and who are, respectively, a troubled mathematical genius and a thrill-seeking salvage diver. Abe Greenwald writes in his review:

The Passenger and Stella Maris are the most Jewish books McCarthy has ever written. Which is to say, they’re not very Jewish at all. But Bobby, Alice, and both their parents are Jewish. There is no evidence of their ever having been exposed to an inkling of Jewish life or thought. But it’s made unmistakably clear that they are Jews. And this raises a question: why? The answer is simple. Verisimilitude. McCarthy knows the degree to which Jews are overrepresented in math and science. His friends and colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute, [the scientific research center where he is a trustee], include or have included theorists such as Murray Gell-Mann, George Zweig, and Lawrence Krauss. He’s well aware of the statistics on Jewish genius.

As Alice says to [the psychiatrist] Dr. Cohen, “Jews represent 2 percent of the population and 80 percent of the mathematicians. If those numbers were even a little more skewed we’d be talking about a separate species.” Some might bristle at the “separate species” remark, but it’s clear McCarthy means it only in reverence.

When it comes to religion, however, the books offer a message of more substance

Alice says . . . in Stella Maris: “Mathematics is ultimately a faith-based initiative. And faith is an uncertain business.” This is McCarthy’s check on scientism, the secular faith that purports to answer all of life’s meaningful questions through the process of observation, experimentation, equation, and peer review. And McCarthy knows whereof he speaks. . . . He edits books and papers from some of the country’s most accomplished scientists on a broad range of topics. Science and math, by his own admission, have come to occupy him more than literature. Thus, he addresses the faith-vs.-science debate from a much-needed perspective. And that perspective, embodied in both Bobby and Alice, is this: science and mathematics are vital in telling us how little we can ever understand, and a world so inscrutable makes faith and mysticism at least a viable avenue of contemplation.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.