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.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.