On December 8, Intentional Beauty, Jewish Ritual Art from the Collection opened at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). Laura Hodes writes in her review of the exhibition:

The MFA is one of only four U.S. art museums (as opposed to Jewish museums) that include Judaica galleries. . . . The majority of the objects in the new gallery are now on display for the first time. The masterpiece in the center of the room is a silver Torah shield from Galicia, probably from Lvov, (now Lviv) in Ukraine, created in 1781–82.

As is the case with many of the objects in the gallery, you need to look closely to appreciate its mastery. A Torah shield is usually designed to be seen only from the front, but this one is intricately carved on both sides. On the front you can see a layer of gilded silver, with sinuous, swirling intertwined plants and animals, some real, some fantastical.

There are also three-dimensional figures of Moses and Aaron on it, flanking a jeweled crown (representing the Torah), and a replica of the Ten Commandments over a shield of silver.

The back of the shield is minutely engraved with the story of the binding of Isaac, with details impossible to see with the naked eye, a level of detail only usually seen in book engravings. Luckily, an interactive display screen actually allows you to magnify the image to catch the details, including the proud inscription on the back, in Hebrew: “This is the work of my hands, Elimelekh Tzoref of Stanislav, in the year 5542.”

Tsoref is the Hebrew word for silversmith.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.