As a child, the celebrated 19th-century American novelist Louisa May Alcott was told that her maternal grandfather, Joseph May, was the descendant of Portuguese Jews. Although May was a practicing Unitarian, the family reportedly took pride in its Jewish ancestry. Alcott’s biographer and relative Eve LaPlante writes:

Last month, Egypt celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, which it had lost in the Six-Day War. Since then Cairo has not used the territory to launch attacks against the Jewish state, but it has once again become a bastion of terror—most of which has been associated with Islamic State and aimed at the Egyptian government. Jonny Essa and Ofir Winter examine the situation in the Sinai, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s recent speech on the subject, and the implications for Israel: