Born into a well-to-do Jewish family in Nancy, André Spire (1868–1966) came of age at a time when, as Daniel Solomon puts it, France’s Jews felt “a serene confidence” in their place in French society. Spire, an aspiring poet and writer pursuing a career in the civil service, challenged anti-Semites to duels on more than one occasion. But soon he concluded that anti-Semitism was too big a problem to be solved with pistols:

Spire declared himself a Zionist for the first time in a letter to his mother, dated October 12, 1904. . . . “I do not feel much enthusiasm to live with [Polish Jews], but it would be much better to live with them than with many Christians. . . . So, ‘next year in Jerusalem.’”

The appearance of Poèmes Juifs (1908) announced Spire’s debut as an unbending opponent of assimilation and indefatigable proponent of Zionism. . . . Spire’s poems savaged the Franco-Jewish consensus and the figure of the assimilated Jew. In “Assimilation,” he mocks a Jewish bourgeois who seeks to blend into the crowd. The poem’s unnamed protagonist scrutinizes himself for the slightest deviation from the norm—in deportment, speech, hand gestures, nose shape, hair texture—and reassures himself that he can fit in. The poet breaks in the last stanzas to upbraid this French Jewish bourgeois.

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.