Born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in what is now Latvia, Max Weinreich encountered anti-Semitism from the moment he left the ḥeder for a secular school, and reacted by gravitating toward Jewish culture. He would eventually become the world’s leading scholar of Yiddish, and of the history and cultural anthropology of Ashkenazi Jewry more broadly. In a biographical essay examining Weinreich’s remarkable career, David Roskies begins with his subject’s debut in the Yiddish literary world:

Weinreich published the first-ever translation of cantos from Homer’s Iliad into Yiddish hexameters, so stunning a feat that it earned him a shoutout from the rising star of Yiddish lyric poetry, Moyshe Kulbak. “In every nation,” Kulbak wrote in “The Yiddish Word,” his essay-manifesto of 1918, “translations of Homer are a measure not only of that nation’s spiritual maturity, but also of the artistic development of its language, capable of rendering a writer such as Homer.”

Weinreich would later spearhead efforts to standardize Yiddish spelling, participating in seemingly obscure debates that in fact turned on how one defines the very essence of Jewish culture:

The Vilna standard [developed by Weinreich and his companions] demanded that the etymological spelling of the Hebrew-Aramaic component of Yiddish, the most ancient stratum of the language, be preserved, for this is what all Jewish languages had in common. Soviet Jewish language planners thought otherwise. To achieve universal literacy while eviscerating rabbinic culture, dismantling ḥeder education, banning religious observance, and driving a permanent wedge between the Soviet working classes and “petit-bourgeois” nationalisms, the Soviet state apparatus mandated a naturalized system of spelling in which all Yiddish words were treated equally. By eliminating [the] “superfluous” letters . . . used only in Hebrew-Aramaic-origin words, followed by the abolition of the final, . . . any Yiddish text printed outside the Soviet Union was rendered indecipherable. Not just ritual purity lay in the details; the devil too.

Yet perhaps the work of Weinreich’s that remains most relevant today was the one that did not concern Yiddish at all, but “a second tier of loyal Nazis and enablers” not tried at Nuremberg, which included “scholars, thinkers, and researchers, some world-renowned.” Roskies continues:

They were the most insidious servants of evil, for scholarship in the service of the Nazis was a double betrayal. Besides aiding and abetting Hitler, Weinreich held them responsible for defiling, perverting, and destroying the very integrity of scholarship itself, the ideal of dispassionate visnshaft [academic study] that only yesterday had been the beacon of Jewish self-emancipation. Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes against the Jewish People (1946) appeared in Yiddish, then again as the first volume in the YIVO English Translation Series.

In it, Weinreich tracked the careers of such luminaries as Martin Heidegger and Hans Naumann, a criminal docket that was alphabetically searchable in the Index of Persons and Institutions. For Weinreich, as for Abraham Joshua Heschel, who read Hitler’s Professors in the Yiddish original, some of these German scholars had been mentors, thesis advisers, and trusted colleagues. So on the day when Weinreich completed the manuscript, March 15, 1946, he asked his personal secretary, Chana Gordon, for a cigarette, a pleasure he had denied himself all through the war. She watched Dr. Weinreich light up and take a few richly deserved puffs; then, without finishing, he put it out.

Since the war began, there has been a tension between Israel’s two primary goals: the destruction of Hamas and the liberation of the hostages. Many see in Israel’s renewed campaign in Gaza a sacrifice of the latter goal in pursuit of the former. But Meir Ben-Shabbat suggests that Israel’s attacks aim to bring Hamas back to the negotiating table:

The timing of the attack, its intensity, and the extent of casualties surprised Hamas. Its senior leaders are likely still wondering whether this is a limited action meant to shock and send a message or the beginning of a sustained operation. The statement by its senior officials linking the renewal of fighting to the fate of the hostages hints at the way it may act to stop Israel. This threat requires the Israeli political leadership to formulate a series of draconian measures and declare that they will be carried out if Hamas harms the hostages.

Ostensibly, Israel’s interest in receiving the hostages and continuing the fighting stands in complete contradiction to that of Hamas, but in practice Hamas has flexibility that has not yet been exhausted. This stems from the large number of hostages in its possession, which allows it to realize additional deals for some of them, and this is what Israel has been aiming its efforts toward.

We must concede that the challenge Israel faces is not simple, but the alternative Hamas presents—surrendering to its dictates and leaving it as the central power factor in Gaza—limits its options. . . . Tightening and significantly hardening the blockade along with increasing pressure through airstrikes, evacuating areas and capturing them, may force Hamas to make its stance more flexible.

But Ben-Shabbat also acknowledges the danger in this approach. The war’s renewal puts the hostages in greater danger. And as Israel makes threats, it will be obliged to carry them out.