As anyone familiar with Fiddler on the Roof knows, matchmakers once played a pivotal role in traditional Jewish life—even though, contrary to the musical, they were almost always men. Jenna Weissman Joselit explains how traditional matchmaking made its way to the U.S. and then fell into decline:

As modernity seized hold of the Jews, introducing them to new forms of social interaction and new ways of thinking about just about everything, including the prospect of intimacy and the meaning of love, Jewish marriage brokers lost their footing as well as their standing. Taken to task and vilified for having commercialized affairs of the heart, they symbolized the old, and increasingly outmoded, order.

Their power diminished, marriage brokers . . . increasingly became the butt of humor and sly derision. By the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the matchmaker was grist for the mill of contemporary Jewish writers, such as Abraham Cahan and Israel Zangwill, with a keen eye for the absurdities of daily life. . . .

Lampooned for their garrulousness and guile, Jewish marriage brokers made for good copy, and in some cases, for a good cry, too. In Cahan’s short story “A Providential Match,” published in English in 1895, the smooth promises of Feivele the matchmaker transform Robert, né Rouvke, from a “simple bokher [young bachelor] into a khoson [a groom],” from a rough-hewn immigrant into a swain. It didn’t take long, though—just a few pages of flowery text—before those promises come to nothing, leaving Robert brokenhearted and alone. . . .

In the years that followed, the Jewish marriage maven became more of a curiosity than a casualty of Americanization. By 1938, when a profile of Rubin’s Matrimonial Bureau appeared in the pages of the New Yorker, Rubin’s days seemed numbered. Written by Meyer Berger, the piece detailed the comings and goings of a “bearded Cupid” named Louis Rubin, . . . one of those people who were in, but not of, the times. “Call and see the World-Prominent MR. RUBIN,” bubbled his business cards and circulars where he [enthusiastically] described his clientele as “respectable business and professional high-class working people and nice, intelligent girls from rich business families, also widows and widowers.” To which [the author] Berger couldn’t resist noting: “It’s a bit breathless, . . . but it gets results.”

Earlier this month, an operative working for, or in conjunction with, Hizballah snuck across the Israel-Lebanese border and planted a sophisticated explosive near the town of Megiddo, which killed a civilian when detonated. On Thursday, another Iranian proxy group launched a drone at a U.S. military base in Syria, killing a contractor and wounding five American soldiers. The former attack appears to be an attempt to change what Israeli officials and analysts call the “rules of the game”: the mutually understood redlines that keep the Jewish state and Hizballah from going to war. Nadav Pollak explains how he believes Jerusalem should respond:

Israel cannot stop at pointing fingers and issuing harsh statements. The Megiddo attack might have caused much more damage given the additional explosives and other weapons the terrorist was carrying; even the lone device detonated at Megiddo could have easily been used to destroy a larger target such as a bus. Moreover, Hizballah’s apparent effort to test (or shift) Jerusalem’s redlines on a dangerous frontier needs to be answered. If [the terrorist group’s leader Hassan] Nasrallah has misjudged Israel, then it is incumbent on Jerusalem to make this clear.

Unfortunately, the days of keeping the north quiet at any cost have passed, especially if Hizballah no longer believes Israel is willing to respond forcefully. The last time the organization perceived Israel to be weak was in 2006, and its resultant cross-border operations (e.g., kidnapping Israeli soldiers) led to a war that proved to be devastating, mostly to Lebanon. If Hizballah tries to challenge Israel again, Israel should be ready to take strong action such as targeting the group’s commanders and headquarters in Lebanon—even if this runs the risk of intense fire exchanges or war.

Relevant preparations for this option should include increased monitoring of Hizballah officials—overtly and covertly—and perhaps even the transfer of some military units to the north. Hizballah needs to know that Israel is no longer shying away from conflict, since this may be the only way of forcing the group to return to the old, accepted rules of the game and step down from the precipice of a war that it does not appear to want.