Among the many outstanding and venerable religious leaders the Jewish world lost in the past year was Rabbi Norman Lamm, a scholar and congregational rabbi as well as the long-time president of Yeshiva University. Zev Eleff relates yet another of Lamm’s many accomplishments: his role in founding Tradition, which has for decades been Orthodox Judaism’s most serious and ambitious English-language periodical.

Launched in 1958, Tradition benefited from Rabbi Lamm’s originality. More important, however, was his resolve. . . . Orthodox leaders started several journals during the 1950s. They were motivated by the earlier initiatives of other members of the American Jewish elite such as Rabbis Robert Gordis and Samuel Dresner of the Conservative movement. The Orthodox reckoned that such projects were useful to help jumpstart a renaissance amid allegations that their community was stuck in a rut, mired in what sociologist Marshall Sklare described as institutional and intellectual “decay.”

The most ambitious attempt to cultivate a class of Orthodox public intellectuals was the brainchild of Norman Lamm and Marvin Fox. The latter was an important Jewish philosopher, first at Ohio State University and then at Brandeis. He was a leading scholar of Moses Maimonides, long before Jewish studies was fashionable in academe. Both men shared a vision of elevating Jewish ideas through mentoring young scholars and writing in an accessible manner for general readers.

Soon Tradition was involved in lively and heated arguments with leading Conservative journals, demonstrating that Orthodoxy could hold its own. Indeed, Eleff credits Lamm and Fox most with their “uncanny” conviction, at a time when Sklare’s evaluation was that of many astute observers, that there could be “an unforecasted Orthodox comeback in American Jewish life.”

When he called upon Hamas to end the war and release the hostages last week, the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas was also getting ready for a reshuffle within his regime. On Saturday, he appointed Hussein al-Sheikh deputy president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is intimately tied to the PA itself. Al-Sheikh would therefore succeed Abbas—who is eighty-nine and reportedly in ill health—as head of the PLO if he should die or become incapacitated, and be positioned to succeed him as head of the PA as well.

Al-Sheikh spent eleven years in an Israeli prison and, writes Maurice Hirsch, was involved in planning a 2002 Jerusalem suicide bombing that killed three. Moreover, Hirsch writes, he “does not enjoy broad Palestinian popularity or support.”

Still, by appointing Al-Sheikh, Abbas has taken a step in the internal reforms he inaugurated last year in the hope that he could prove to the Biden administration and other relevant players that the PA was up to the task of governing the Gaza Strip. Neomi Neumann writes:

Abbas’s motivation for reform also appears rooted in the need to meet the expectations of Arab and European donors without compromising his authority. On April 14, the EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas approved a three-year aid package worth 1.6 billion euros, including 620 million euros in direct budget support tied to reforms. Meanwhile, the French president Emmanuel Macron held a call with Abbas [earlier this month] and noted afterward that reforms are essential for the PA to be seen as a viable governing authority for Gaza—a telling remark given reports that Paris may soon recognize “the state of Palestine.”

In some cases, reforms appear targeted at specific regional partners. The idea of appointing a vice-president originated with Saudi Arabia.

In the near term, Abbas’s main goal appears to be preserving Arab and European support ahead of a major international conference in New York this June.