In the 18th century, the Jewish community of Jamaica reached its high point, with a population of about 1,000—likely more Jews than there were in all of the thirteen American colonies together. The majority of these Jews were Sephardim of Portuguese background, who had come via France, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. In conversation with Nachi Weinstein, Stanley Mirvis explains the origins of this Caribbean Jewish community, its economic standing, its rabbis, the unique forms of anti-Semitism it encountered, and how it became the home of one of the world’s most celebrated cantors. (Audio, 65 minutes.)

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].