Last summer, the Capital Jewish Museum opened in the District of Columbia to showcase the history of the city’s Jews. Gabby Deutsch writes:

The story of the building, which was the original home of Adas Israel Congregation, is distinctly Washington. The guest of honor at its grand opening was President Ulysses S. Grant. . . . Later, when a group of Jewish Washingtonians wanted to purchase the building back in the 1960s for historical preservation purposes, they had to lobby Congress to approve the sale. Now, for the first time in more than 100 years, that building is again a gathering place for Washington’s Jews.

A small exhibit now on display is one of the first at a Jewish museum to deal with the October 7 terror attacks in Israel and their aftermath in the U.S.

Like others who move to the nation’s capital, Jews came to Washington to work in the government. That meant wars brought Jewish population booms—first the Civil War, and then both world wars. Jews faced fewer restrictions when seeking jobs in the federal government than when looking for jobs in fields such as law and medicine. Many other Jews arrived in Washington to work as merchants, or in family-run businesses. Often, they already had relatives in DC.

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.