When I first became aware of the recording artist Matthew Miller, better known as Mattisyahu, I heard him described as a “hasidic reggae superstar,” and that is the apt phrase employed here by Akiva Schick in his examination of Mattisyahu’s career. Exposed to Judaism as a young adult via Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism, Mattisyahu became a full-fledged member of that denomination while enjoying his greatest musical and commercial success. He later publicly left Chabad and Orthodoxy, although hasidic ideas continue to inform his lyrics. Schick writes:

The question swirling around Matisyahu’s career from the beginning was just how seriously to take him. In some ways that’s still the question, but his debut album was no gimmick. It was a thoughtful, winding yet cohesive work of self-reflection, dense with cryptic allusions. In the lead song, “Chop ’Em Down,” Matisyahu sings, almost in passing, “Six hundred thousand witnessed it, no you didn’t forget,” without explaining that he’s referring to the revelation at Sinai, the 600,000 Israelites who, according to tradition, were at the foot of the mountain, or the idea that all Jewish souls carry the memory.

Matisyahu’s days of stardom are behind him, but that was inevitable, given the nature of pop culture. Unfortunately, his artistic inspiration seems to have largely gone too. I don’t begrudge his religious transformation, but Chabad theology and the Bible were the wells he drew from for his best songs, and if there is an angry or melancholy song about how those wells are now closed to him, in the vein of modern Jewish artists from the maskilim and Yiddish poets to Yehuda Amichai, he has yet to sing it. Perhaps that’s because he’s not really angry. He’s even still fond of Hasidism.

In a momentous meeting with the Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh, President Trump announced that he is lifting sanctions on the beleaguered and war-torn country. On the one hand, Sharaa is an alumnus of Islamic State and al-Qaeda, who came to power as commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which itself began life as al-Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot; he also seems to enjoy the support of Qatar. On the other hand, he overthrew the Assad regime—a feat made possible by the battering Israel delivered to Hizballah—greatly improving Jerusalem’s strategic position, and ending one of the world’s most atrocious and brutal tyrannies. President Trump also announced that he hopes Syria will join the Abraham Accords.

This analysis by Eran Lerman was published a few days ago, and in some respects is already out of date, but more than anything else I’ve read it helps to make sense of Israel’s strategic position vis-à-vis Syria.

Israel’s primary security interest lies in defending against worst-case scenarios, particularly the potential collapse of the Syrian state or its transformation into an actively hostile force backed by a significant Turkish presence (considering that the Turkish military is the second largest in NATO) with all that this would imply. Hence the need to bolster the new buffer zone—not for territorial gain, but as a vital shield and guarantee against dangerous developments. Continued airstrikes aimed at diminishing the residual components of strategic military capabilities inherited from the Assad regime are essential.

At the same time, there is a need to create conditions that would enable those in Damascus who wish to reject the reduction of their once-proud country into a Turkish satrapy. Sharaa’s efforts to establish his legitimacy, including his visit to Paris and outreach to the U.S., other European nations, and key Gulf countries, may generate positive leverage in this regard. Israel’s role is to demonstrate through daily actions the severe costs of acceding to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions and accepting Turkish hegemony.

Israel should also assist those in Syria (and beyond: this may have an effect in Lebanon as well) who look to it as a strategic anchor in the region. The Druze in Syria—backed by their brethren in Israel—have openly expressed this expectation, breaking decades of loyalty to the central power in Damascus over their obligation to their kith and kin.