Located between the Ashkenazi heartland of western Germany and northeastern France on the one hand, and the Sephardi world south of the Pyrenees on the other, was the Jewish community of Provence. From roughly the 12th through the 14th centuries, it was a center of intense intellectual creativity. One of its most impressive sons was the grammarian and exegete Rabbi David Kimhi. Itamar Eichner reports on a work by Kimhi’s father, a famed scholar in his own right:

Recent contributions from the William Davidson Foundation, the Zucker and Kraus families, and Sid Lapidus allowed a rare medieval French Jewish manuscript titled M’zukak Shiv’atayim (“Refined Seventyfold”) to be acquired and transferred to the National Library of Israel.

The book, likely the only surviving copy of its kind, . . . contains a commentary on seven of the fourteen volumes of Maimonides’ [great code of talmudic law], Mishneh Torah, and was copied in Provence, likely soon after the death of its author, Rabbi Joseph Kimhi, in 1170. In it, Kimhi provides sources for Maimonides’ legal and philosophical rulings, some of which no longer exist elsewhere.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.