This year, Rosh Hashanah services were held in Bergen, Norway’s second largest city, for the first time since World War II. Menachem Wecker describes the revival of the city’s Jewish community, many decades after it was wiped out in the Holocaust, and places it in its historical context:

Norway, whose constitution banned Jews from entry until 1851, has struggled with anti-Semitism. It took until 2012 for Norway to apologize for the first time for complicity in arresting and deporting Jews during the Holocaust. . . . A December 2017 Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies survey found 8.3 percent of Norwegians held negative views of Jews—down from 12.1 percent in 2011. (More than 30 percent disliked Muslims.)

And . . . the Norwegian public television station NRK has recently broadcast [programs with] anti-Semitic tropes and references, including the Jewish domination of the media, “pizza ovens” in concentration camps, and the idea that it might be good if the COVID-19 vaccine didn’t work rather than protect Israelis.

Bergen Jews created a new organization, Det Jødiske Samfunn i Bergen, last year, and the city recognized it in December. On Rosh Hashanah, the group’s leader, Gideon Ovadya, a Beersheba native, read from the Torah, and a University of Bergen musician proved “the world’s greatest shofar player,” said Dániel Péter Biró, the deputy leader and a music-composition professor at the university. The menu featured High Holiday fixings like apples and honey and local pescatarian flavor: very-spicy cod and salmon.

With the IDF engaged in ground maneuvers in both northern and southern Gaza, and a plan about to go into effect next week that would separate more than 100,000 civilians from Hamas’s control, an end to the war may at last be in sight. Yet there seems to be no agreement within Israel, or without, about what should become of the territory. Efraim Inbar assesses the various proposals, from Donald Trump’s plan to remove the population entirely, to the Israeli far-right’s desire to settle the Strip with Jews, to the internationally supported proposal to place Gaza under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA)—and exposes the fatal flaws of each. He therefore tries to reframe the problem:

[M]any Arab states have failed to establish a monopoly on the use of force within their borders. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan all suffer from civil wars or armed militias that do not obey the central government.

Perhaps Israel needs to get used to the idea that in the absence of an entity willing to take Gaza under its wing, chaos will prevail there. This is less terrible than people may think. Chaos would allow Israel to establish buffer zones along the Gaza border without interference. Any entity controlling Gaza would oppose such measures and would resist necessary Israeli measures to reduce terrorism. Chaos may also encourage emigration.

Israel is doomed to live with bad neighbors for the foreseeable future. There is no way to ensure zero terrorism. Israel should avoid adopting a policy of containment and should constantly “mow the grass” to minimize the chances of a major threat emerging across the border. Periodic conflicts may be necessary. If the Jews want a state in their homeland, they need to internalize that Israel will have to live by the sword for many more years.