Robert Nathan (1894-1985), an American Sephardi Jew whose ancestors had first come to America before the Revolution, was a prolific author of fiction, most of it with supernatural themes. Although little remembered today, his work was very successful in the first half of the 20th century. In 1935, he wrote Road of Ages, which imagines a massive caravan of Jews—having been expelled from Europe, Palestine, and everywhere else—making their way to a safe haven promised them in Mongolia. Michael Weingrad writes:

The caravan includes atheists and believers, radicals and capitalists, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, aesthetes and laborers, hasidic rebbes and German concertmasters. . . . Thus, one of the running themes in Nathan’s episodic little novel is the extent of Jewish differences, the other is the process of cooperation and even fusion.

Two years earlier, Nathan had written an essay for Scribner’s titled “On Being a Jew.” There, Nathan explains that, lacking a normative Jewish religious faith, he has little sense of himself as a Jew by religion or as an active part of the organized Jewish community. He has found himself the object of hatred and prejudice in the Christian world, but also mistrusted by “the good bourgeois Jews themselves, because I was a poet, an artist, a bohemian, and a bad business risk.” Tepidly, he writes that the answer to the question of whether he is proud to be a Jew is “both yes, and no. . . . I am a Jew, I was born a Jew. Very well, let me neither deny it nor boast of it, but simply and gently accept it.”

David, the poet-character in Road of Ages, has some of this standoffishness—but sheds it. At first he identifies most strongly with the non-Jewish Amanda, who accompanies the caravan because she is married to a Jew, but says that she can never feel that this is her people. Yet in the course of the novel David finds himself caught up in the life of the caravan; sharing their sorrows and striving, he “no longer felt alone among the Jews.”

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.