One of the many things that make the Talmud such an unusual text is its multitude of voices: rather than tell a story or make an argument, it presents a meandering conversation—or, more often, an dispute—among various rabbis living over the course of many centuries. While a few works produced by the same rabbinic circles around the same time share something of this conversational quality, it was one that fell out of style later on. Subsequent generations of rabbis wrote treatises, commentaries, poems, and even Platonic-style dialogues, but didn’t seek to anthologize the sayings of predecessors into a vast conversation.

There was one exception: the Tosafot, or “additions,” which collected the talmudic analyses of 12th- and 13th-century rabbis, mostly from Germany and northeastern France, into a commentary in the Talmud’s own form. According to Ephraim Kanarfogel, the compilers of the Tosafot did so because these scholars saw themselves as the direct inheritors of the amora’im, the sages of the 3rd through 6th centuries whose words make up much of the Talmud. He explains the intellectual world of these medieval rabbis in conversation with J.J. Kimche.

Steve Witkoff, the American special envoy leading negotiations with the Islamic Republic, has sent mixed signals about his intentions, some of them recently contradicted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Michael Doran looks at the progress of the talks so far, and explains why he fears that they could result in an even worse version of the 2015 deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA):

This new deal will preserve Iran’s latent nuclear weapons capabilities—centrifuges, scientific expertise, and unmonitored sites—that will facilitate a simple reconstitution in the future. These capabilities are far more potent today than they were in 2015, with Iran’s advances making them easier to reactivate, a significant step back from the JCPOA’s constraints.

In return, President Trump would offer sanctions relief, delivering countless billions of dollars to Iranian coffers. Iran, in the meantime, will benefit from the permanent erasure of JCPOA snapback sanctions, set to expire in October 2025, reducing U.S. leverage further. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps will use the revenues to support its regional proxies, such as Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis, whom it will arm with missiles and drones that will not be restricted by the deal.

Worse still, Israel will not be able to take action to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons:

A unilateral military strike . . . is unlikely without Trump’s backing, as Israel needs U.S. aircraft and missile defenses to counter Iran’s retaliation with drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles—a counterattack Israel cannot fend off alone.

By defanging Iran’s proxies and destroying its defenses, Israel stripped Tehran naked, creating a historic opportunity to end forever the threat of its nuclear weapons program. But Tehran’s weakness also convinced it to enter the kind of negotiations at which it excels. Israel’s battlefield victories, therefore, facilitated a deal that will place Iran’s nuclear program under an undeclared but very real American protective shield.