In answering the question of what cantors do all day, Matt Austerklein explores a forgotten German journal, whose full title translates as “The Jewish Cantor: Weekly Journal for the General Interests of All Cantors and Religious Officials, as Well as for the General Interests of Judaism.”

This trade journal . . . ran weekly for nearly two decades (1879–1898) out of the Prussian region of Bromberg, shipping within Europe and even to America. It is one of many cantorial periodicals published in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, describing the glorious books, debates, and daily concerns of your average European Ashkenazi cantor. One could write a juicy novella or an amazing PhD based on these publications alone.

But my favorite part of these journals are the advertisements. . . . Need a new piece for Tal, the spring prayer for dew? Write to the Oberkantor [senior cantor] H. Berggrün of Hannover for his new choral setting.

“Wanted from London! A religious girl with good character to be a housekeeper and cook for a childless couple. Annual salary increases guaranteed! Write to Mrs. S. Münz at 30 Thornhill Crescent in Barnsbury.” In case you are in a small pulpit with few prospects for your unmarried daughter you can send her off to London!

In a recent episode of 60 Minutes, a former State Department official tells the interviewer that U.S. support for Israel following October 7 has “put a target on America’s back” in the Arab world “and beyond the Arab world.” The complaint is a familiar one: Middle Easterners hate the United States because of its closeness to the Jewish state. But this gets things exactly backward. Just look at the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various Arab proxies: America is the “Great Satan” and Israel is but the “Little Satan.”

Why, then, does Iran see the U.S. as the world’s primary source of evil? The usual answer invokes the shah’s 1953 ouster of his prime minister, but the truth is that this wasn’t the subversion of democracy it’s usually made out to be, and the CIA’s role has been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, Ladan Boroumand points out,

the 1953 coup was welcomed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution], and would not have succeeded without the active complicity of proponents of political Islam. And . . . the United States not only refrained from opposing the Islamic Revolution but inadvertently supported its emergence and empowered its agents. How then could . . . Ayatollah Khomeini’s virulent enmity toward the United States be explained or excused?

Khomeini’s animosity toward the shah and the United States traces back to 1963–64, when the shah initiated sweeping social reforms that included granting women the right to vote and to run for office and extending religious minorities’ political rights. These reforms prompted the pro-shah cleric of 1953 to become his vocal critic. It wasn’t the shah’s autocratic rule that incited Khomeini’s opposition, but rather the liberal nature of his autocratically implemented social reforms.

There is no need for particular interpretive skill to comprehend the substance of Khomeini’s message: as Satan, America embodies the temptation that seduces Iranian citizens into sin and falsehood. “Human rights” and “democracy” are America’s tools for luring sinful and deviant citizens into conspiring against the government of God established by the ayatollah.

Or, as George W. Bush put it, jihadists hate America because “they hate our freedoms.”