Today’s newsletter began with Yemen, so it seems appropriate to conclude with Yemen as well. In January, the National Library of Israel announced that it had acquired the world’s largest collection of Yemenite Judaica, comprising some 60,000 manuscripts and fragmentary texts. Asaf Elia Shalev tells the story behind this archive:

The massive collection was donated by the descendants of Yehuda Levi Nahum, a butcher who died in 1998 after spending more than 50 years meticulously acquiring and studying the material. It includes Judeo-Yemenite translations of works by the medieval intellectual giant Maimonides, and writings by Yihya Saleh, a leading 18th-century rabbinic-law scholar from Yemen, as well as ancient Jewish marriage contracts.

The unlikely story of this accumulation of Jewish literary riches begins a century ago in the town of Sana’a in Yemen when Nahum was an enterprising young teenager. Born to a family with limited means, he had saved up some money by selling candy and clothing. At age fourteen, he convinced his parents to allow him to leave the country and travel hundreds of miles to the Holy Land.

Earning a living as a butcher, he spent his free time collecting handwritten books. He started by writing to his parents in Yemen, requesting items; his parents didn’t arrive until 1949 with Operation Magic Carpet, which brought the bulk of Yemenite Jewry to Israel. Later, he visited the immigrant camps and acquired books from the new arrivals.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.