A simultaneously wise and foolish folk hero whose humorous adventures tend to satirize figures of authority? To an Ashkenazi Jew, this might sound like one of the wise men of Chelm or the tales of Hershele of Ostropol. To a Moroccan Jew, it is an apt description of the folkloric character named Seha. Marc Eliany, who has recently published a book of these tales, writes:

Rep­re­sent­ed in Jew­ish, Mus­lim, and Chris­t­ian sto­ries through­out the Mediter­ranean basin, Seha was depict­ed in a vari­ety of ways. In Jew­ish inter­pre­ta­tions, Seha was the prophet Eli­jah, the Baby­lon­ian Rab­bi Yose, an une­d­u­cat­ed spice-mak­er, a saint, a yeshi­va stu­dent, a wan­der­ing mer­chant, a jew­el­er, and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Jew­ish Moroc­can res­i­dents. . . . When my grand­fa­ther, a rab­bi, told me sto­ries, he described Seha as sim­i­lar to him­self. My mater­nal grand­moth­er pre­sent­ed Seha as a socioe­co­nom­ic and polit­i­cal hero—as a reflec­tion of her own prox­im­i­ty to local polit­i­cal lead­ers. My pater­nal grand­moth­er, on the oth­er hand, trans­formed him into a comedic, self-dep­re­cat­ing figure.

In fact, self-dep­re­ca­tion in Moroc­can Jew­ish sto­ry­telling serves as a means of cop­ing with the lim­i­ta­tions of the dhim­ma sys­tem—a Mus­lim law that charged non-Mus­lims a tax in exchange for free­dom of reli­gion and prop­er­ty own­er­ship. Humor in Seha tales lessens the dif­fer­ences between Moroc­can Jews and their Mus­lim neigh­bors, ful­fill­ing a com­mu­ni­ty need to ele­vate the sta­tus of dhim­ma Jews.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.