The Jews of 100 years ago were known for their fervent ideological attachments, in particular to Zionism and Communism. Eddy Portnoy observes that there was another -ism that is less remembered: vegetarianism.

While it’s not generally considered among the multiple “isms” to which immigrant Jews attached themselves in the early 20th century, vegetarianism was not an insignificant movement in Yiddish-speaking New York. According to Yiddish journalist A.M. Shtiglitz, vegetarianism attracted thousands of young Jews, many of whom saw it as a revolt against materialism. Jewish immigrants of this era founded a number of different vegetarian organizations and produced a variety of magazines and pamphlets designed to draw the Yiddish audience to meatless fare. The philosophy of anarcho-naturism, of which vegetarianism was a component, also appealed to immigrant Jews on the Lower East Side, among whom anarchism had been a nominally popular political ideology since the late 1880s.

Chief among the Jewish vegetarians was a man named Moyshe Yitzhok Littauer, who, after immigrating to New York from Poland in 1899,

grew out his hair and beard just before World War I and began to saunter about New York’s Jewish quarter wearing white robes and sandals, preaching the benefits of his chosen diet. With a deep interest in mysticism and Buddhism, he also had an aversion to modern technology and refused to take the subway or streetcars, and always went by foot.

Known as the “Ghandi of East Broadway,” Littauer later

founded a vegetarian nudist colony in New Jersey to which he and a group of about 60 Jewish immigrants decamped in 1917 to escape the stifling tenements of the Lower East Side, and where they communed with nature, ate vegetables, and got naked.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.