In his book Fragile Neighborhoods, Seth Kaplan argues that the decline of local communities, where people know one another and feel some sense of belonging, has encouraged such social problems as loneliness, the erosion of faith, and the decline of civic life—with all their attendant consequences. Patrick T. Brown writes in his review:

Crucially, Kaplan sees the fragility of American life not just in the low-income neighborhoods of inner-city Philadelphia, but in the isolation of otherwise well-off suburbs. His goal is to resurrect the idea of the neighborhood as a specific place with a distinctive sense of community. It’s a cultural narrative that runs counter to a mentality that prioritizes mobility over stability.

No amount of economic growth, he argues, can paper over the hollowed-out feeling of moving from a “townshipped” society to a “networked one.” We treat neighbors less as friends and more as connections, asking about suspicious footage caught on Ring cameras or posting about local nuisances, instead of getting to know our neighbors as people. Kaplan laments this shift by quoting the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: “The very concept of belonging to a place, a neighborhood, a locality—somewhere we belong and call home—has all but disappeared.”

Elsewhere, Kaplan has held up Orthodox Jewish enclaves, kept together in part by the need to live in walking distance from a synagogue, as a model to be emulated.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.