Few thinkers have had so great an influence on the American Constitution and regime as the British philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). Among his most prominent works is A Letter Concerning Toleration, which makes one of the earliest and most important arguments for religious freedom. Rafi Eis explores what Jews and the Jewish state can learn from this document:

John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) . . . argues for a kind of separation between church and state based on the idea “that the whole jurisdiction of the magistrate reaches only to these civil concernments, . . . and that it neither can nor ought in any manner to be extended to the salvation of souls.”

Every few months, the Jewish world and Jewish state is roiled by another religion-state conflict. These disagreements invariably revolve around the autonomy desired by various individuals and communities versus the standards and enforcement powers of the Orthodox rabbinate empowered by the state of Israel. . . . These conflicts would benefit from a reading of Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration.

Locke’s contention that “nobody is born a member of any church” does not reflect a Jewish understanding of religion. Judaism is more than a set of beliefs. We are born as Jews with obligations. While individuals may choose otherwise, that choice is not recognized as halakhically valid. These differences are critical in understanding the tension between individual freedom and national identity today. Israel needs religious toleration, but it must have different underlying principles than those of Locke. As we celebrate the blessing that is Jewish power in a modern nation-state may we also embrace the challenges that such power generates.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].