I’ll end on a less dire note with this introduction to the life and work of Abraham Ibn Daud (1110–1180), a Cordovan rabbi who spent most of his adult life in Toledo, and could be considered the Diaspora’s first Jewish historian. Tamar Marvin explains his most famous work, Sefer ha-Kabbalah, or the Book of the Tradition:

Sefer ha-Kabbalah is, to our modern eyes, largely unsourced and at times clearly fabricated, for example, lifting tropes from well-known aggadot [rabbinic tales] of the Babylonian Talmud. It is also a masterpiece of premodern historiography that serves as one of our best and only sources for many events, especially those occurring in medieval Spain. In its partial truths, as we would identify them today, it also records kernels we know to reflect historical realities, as well as informing us about the communal-historical beliefs of Jewish elites in 12th-century Spain.

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.