A descendent of distinguished Protestant clergymen on both sides, Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) was a gifted journalist and perhaps the greatest American literary critic of his day. He began enthusiastically studying biblical Hebrew in the 1950s, and kept up his study for the remainder of his life. Writing for publications like the New Republic, Commentary, and the New York Review of Books, he also rubbed elbows with a number of prominent American Jewish intellectuals—not all of whom shared his views about Israel, of which, as Shalom Goldman writes, he “was an enthusiastic supporter.” Goldman continues:

What Wilson saw in the Jewish intellectual tradition was an affirmation of the scholarly, and an openness to criticism. As a representative of an American cultural world that he believed was disappearing, he sought allyship in the Jewish tradition. In his mind, what was noble about the American tradition was its “Hebraic” element. In Jewish culture he saw the possibility of American renewal or, at the very least, cultural preservation.

A bannerlike inscription in biblical Hebrew hung over his desk in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and it was this phrase, Hazak hazak v’nithazek (“be strong and be strengthened” in Wilson’s translation), that is engraved on the base of his tombstone.

In his occasional excursions into short fiction, Wilson also took up Jewish themes. In Encounter, Wilson published a short story, “The Messiah at the Seder.” In that story the messiah appears in mid-20th-century Manhattan on the eve of Passover. He is invited to a seder on the Upper West Side. There he discovers that the fractious and contentious participants at the seder—which include a Freudian, a Marxist, and a religious thinker—are unable to accept that he is the redeemer. . . . This satire on the multiplicity of opinions in the Jewish world is anything but savage. The satirical effect is achieved with considerable subtlety and verve.

The short story is a delightful one and the most sensitive fictional portrait of Jewish life by a non-Jewish author that I’ve ever read.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.