The quarrels between Hasidim and Mitnagdim, Reform and Orthodox, Zionists and anti-Zionists all pitted Jews against one another, divided communities, and at times grew ferocious. But none may have been quite so intense, or so far-reaching, as that between two of the 18th century’s most prominent rabbis: Jacob Emden and Jonathan Eybeschutz. These two men weren’t simply towering talmudic scholars, but experts on kabbalah keenly interested in new scientific advances and other ideas coming from the non-Jewish world. Maoz Kahana goes so far as to compare the polymathic Eybeschutz to Leonardo da Vinci.

Around 1751, Emden accused Eybeschutz of being a secret adherent of the heterodox mystical teachings of Shabbetai Tsvi, the 17th-century failed messiah. While many of Shabbetai’s followers were “antinomian,” believing in the salvific power of ritualized transgression, crypto-Sabbatians like (allegedly) Eybeschutz were “hyper-nomian,” observing Jewish law with particular stringency. He was thus a hasid in the older sense—predating the hasidic movement we know today—someone of great piety and meticulous ritual observance, often mystically inclined.

Yet, according to Emden, Eybeschutz was a dangerous heretic whose ideas went against the fundamental tenets of Orthodoxy. After several years of fierce controversy, Rabbi Ezekiel Landau of Prague adjudicated the dispute and forced a compromise on the two rabbis.

Kahana, in conversation with J.J. Kimche, describes these two personalities, Eybeschutz’s complex fusion of mysticism and science, the controversy itself, and what it reveals about the nature of Judaism. (Audio, 70 minutes.)

Reacting to the White House’s proposal for Gaza, John Podhoretz asks the question on everyone’s mind:

Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?

A Palestinian state in the wake of October 7—and in the wake of the scenes of Gazans mobbing the Jewish hostages with bloodlust in their eyes as they were being led to the vehicles to take them back into the bosom of their people? Biden foreign-policy domos Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken were still talking about this in the wake of their defeat in ludicrous lunchtime discussions with the Financial Times, thus reminding the world of what it means when fundamentally silly, unserious, and embarrassingly incompetent people are given the levers of power for a while. For they should know what I know and what I suspect you know too: there will be no Palestinian state if these residents of Gaza are the people who will form the political nucleus of such a state.

Some form of UN management/leadership in the wake of the hostilities? Well, that might sound good to people who have been paying no attention to the fact that United Nations officials have been, at the very best, complicit in hostage-taking and torture in facilities run by UNRWA, the agency responsible for administering Gaza.

And blubber not to me about the displacement of Gazans from their home. We’ve been told not that Gaza is their home but that it is a prison. Trump is offering Gazans a way out of prison; do they really want to stay in prison? Or does this mean it never really was a prison in the first place?