Between 1901 and 1906, Funk & Wagnalls published a twelve-volume Jewish Encyclopedia, which remains a monumental work of Jewish scholarship. Jenna Weissman Joselit explains its origins and the hype it generated:

The brainchild of Isidore Singer, a Moravian-born Jew with a penchant for ambitious schemes, the venture came into the world freighted with expectations. Not only was his proposed “Encyclopedia of the History and Mental Evolution of the Jewish Race” intended to educate, enlighten, and uplift American Jews, it was also designed to lessen anti-Semitism. “It will, at last, make the Jew thoroughly understood,” predicted Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler, the project’s executive committee chair, at a celebratory banquet given in 1901. I.K. Funk, [the Ohio-born Lutheran pastor who gave his name to Funk & Wagnalls], took things even further, confident that the publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia would bring about “universal brotherhood” at the turn of a page.

The effort led to a number of controversies, for instance:

All in a dither about an entry for “English pugilists” that featured the lives of Abraham and Israel Belasco, Rabbi Louis Wolsey of Little Rock, Arkansas, demanded in 1902 to know “what scientific or religious or sentimental reason can the learned editor have for allowing these edifying biographies to find their ways [sic] into a Jewish Encyclopedia? . . . On this basis, a Jewish baseball player will have a right” to put in an appearance, he harumphed. (A later generation of Jewish encyclopedias did just that, featuring articles on Moe Berg, Hank Greenberg, and Sandy Koufax.)

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.