The focus of Yom Kippur, the weeks leading up to it, and the upcoming holiday of Hoshanah Rabbah is t’shuvah—meaning repentance, or, more literally, return. As Moses Maimonides taught, t’shuvah requires regretting one’s misdeeds, begging for forgiveness, resolving not to repeat those deeds, and then, finally, not repeating them. Jeff Jacoby examines the story of two presidents who, rather than engage in stage-managed damage control, actually did t’shuvah in their public lives. The first, Ulysses S. Grant, issued an order expelling the Jews from Tennessee during the Civil War—an act of anti-Semitism almost without parallel in U.S. history. But by the time Grant became president in 1869 he deeply regretted what his wife called “that obnoxious order.”

Grant was ashamed of what he had done in Tennessee. . . . He had come to regard his order as a blot on his reputation and was determined to make amends. As a result, the eight years of the Grant administration proved a golden age for American Jewry.

During his time in the White House, Grant appointed more Jews to federal office than any of his predecessors—including to positions, such as governor of the Washington Territory, previously considered too lofty to be offered to a Jew. He opposed efforts to add an amendment to the Constitution designating Jesus as “the Ruler among the nations.” He became the first president publicly to condemn the mistreatment of Jews abroad. “The sufferings of the Hebrews of Rumania profoundly touches every sensibility of our nature,” Grant said in 1870—a sensibility he underscored by the unprecedented selection of a Jewish consul general to Bucharest.

This was repentance of the highest order—not merely a pro-forma apology, but a heartfelt change of attitude and behavior that lasted a lifetime.

The other was Vice-President Chester A. Arthur, who had spent his career benefitting from and upholding the system of patronage and corruption that characterized much politics of his day. But his change of heart came when then-President James Garfield was assassinated by an opponent of Garfield’s anti-corruption stance:

Garfield’s death made Arthur president, but he took no joy in his accession to the highest office in the land. The knowledge that a good man had been murdered so that he could take his place and preserve the corrupt patronage system haunted him—and changed him.

Arthur turned firmly against the spoils system he had always championed. In a formal message to Congress, he explicitly recommended an overhaul of federal hiring practices. . . . He appointed qualified members to the new Civil Service Commission, and firmly enforced the commission’s new rules. This was atonement of extraordinary purity.

Last Tuesday, the Houthis—the faction now ruling much of Yemen—said that they intend to renew attacks on international shipping through the Red and Arabian Seas. They had for the most part paused their attacks following the January 19 Israel-Hamas cease-fire, but their presence has continued to scare away maritime traffic near the Yemeni coast, with terrible consequences for the global economy.

The U.S. responded on Saturday by initiating strikes on Houthi missile depots, command-and-control centers, and propaganda outlets, and has promised that the attacks will continue for days, if not weeks. The Houthis responded by launching drones, and possibly missiles, at American naval ships, apparently without result. Another missile fired from Yemen struck the Sinai, but was likely aimed at Israel. As Ari Heistein has written in Mosaic, it may take a sustained and concerted effort to stop the Houthis, who have high tolerance for casualties—but this is a start. Ron Ben-Yishai provides some context:

The goal is to punish the Houthis for directly targeting Western naval vessels in the Red Sea while also exerting indirect pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program. . . . While the Biden administration did conduct airstrikes against the Houthis, it refrained from a proactive military campaign, fearing a wider regional war. However, following the collapse of Iran’s axis—including Hizballah’s heavy losses in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria—the Trump administration appears unafraid of such an escalation.

Iran, the thinking goes, will also get the message that the U.S. isn’t afraid to use force, or risk the consequences of retaliation—and will keep this in mind as it considers negotiations over its nuclear program. Tamir Hayman adds:

The Houthis are the last proxy of the Shiite axis that have neither reassessed their actions nor restrained their weapons. Throughout the campaign against the Yemenite terrorist organization, the U.S.-led coalition has made operational mistakes: Houthi regime infrastructure was not targeted; the organization’s leaders were not eliminated; no sustained operational continuity was maintained—only actions to remove immediate threats; no ground operations took place, not even special-forces missions; and Iran has not paid a price for its proxy’s actions.

But if this does not stop the Houthis, it will project weakness—not just toward Hamas but primarily toward Iran—and Trump’s power diplomacy will be seen as hollow. The true test is one of output, not input. The only question that matters is not how many strikes the U.S. carries out, but whether the Red Sea reopens to all vessels. We will wait and see—for now, things look brighter than they did before.