Seven years ago, William Kolbrener found himself in a religious crisis, feeling unsure of the path of strict Jewish observance he had chosen. Now, looking back, he describes a visit to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum that helped him through the crisis, in particular a viewing of Rembrandt van Rijn’s paintings on Jewish and biblical themes. These often feature books and other texts, sometimes in Hebrew characters:

Rembrandt’s Jewish book gives life to his greatest works, and to the liberal world in the making in Amsterdam’s Golden Age. The painter treasures the Hebrew Scriptures as the source that animates the ideals of liberal democracy—fairness, justice, law, toleration. His is a Christian world to be sure, but the Jew is not erased, but present. With his studio in the Jewish Quarter, Rembrandt’s paintings put the Jew at the center of a democratic future. Tolerate the Jew, and other minorities follow. The Jewish presence in Rembrandt’s works is a painterly toleration act, the first step towards the liberal world that his paintings imagine.

One of these is Hannah Instructing Samuel (1655), which shows the prophet’s mother sitting in a chair, a book on her lap, and a young Samuel peering at it, with what appear to be the Ten Commandments engraved in Hebrew on the wall in the background.

Hannah sits, her face luminous. The white garment makes her angelic; but the black cape encircling her head, shoulders, and neck seems to hold her down, almost keeping her from floating away. The bulk of her skirt spreads over her tree-trunk legs. Her left sandal is discarded; she is connected to the earth. Rembrandt discovers the Jewish sacred in his Hannah, at once transcendent [and] this-worldly. The painting, in the end, is Christian, but Hannah, the Jew, is not going anywhere.

In keeping the Hebrew book open, and the Jew on the canvas, [Rembrandt] paints a world in the making. Hannah’s book remains literally open, her fingers holding a place. Her book, our book, gives life to everything Rembrandt paints around her—her surroundings, Greek, Christian, Jewish, and ours.

Around the same time Kolbrener was visiting the Netherlands, Mosaic published a series of essays on Rembrandt on the Jews by Meir Soloveichik. If the topic intrigues you, I recommend having a look.

Last week, the Lebanese parliament chose Joseph Aoun to be the country’s next president, filling a position that has been vacant since 2022. Aoun, currently commander of the military—and reportedly supported by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia—edged out Suleiman Frangiyeh, Hizballah’s preferred candidate. But while Aoun’s victory is a step in the right direction, David Daoud sounds a cautionary note:

Lebanon’s president lacks the constitutional authority to order Hizballah’s disarmament, and Aoun was elected as another “consensus president” with Hizballah’s votes. They wouldn’t vote for a man who would set in motion a process leading to their disarmament.

Habib Malik agrees that hoping for too much to come out of the election could constitute “daydreaming,” but he nonetheless believes the Lebanese have a chance to win their country back from Hizballah and, ultimately, make peace with Israel:

Lebanon’s 2019 economic collapse and the 2020 massive explosion at the Beirut Port were perpetrated by the ruling mafia, protected ever since by Hizballah. [But] Lebanon’s anti-Iran/Hizballah communities constitute a reliable partner for both the U.S. and Israel. The Lebanese are desperate to be rid of Iranian influence in order to pursue regional peace and prosperity with their neighbors. Suddenly, a unique opportunity for peace breaking out between Israel and Lebanon could be upon us, particularly given President Trump’s recent reelection with a landslide mandate. It was under Trump’s first term that the Abraham Accords came into being and so under his second term they could certainly be expanded.

As matters stand, Lebanon has very few major contentious issues with Israel. The precisely targeted and methodical nature of Israel’s war in Lebanon against Hizballah and what has unfolded in Syria make this outcome a far more attainable goal.