The island nation of Singapore is already home to southeast Asia’s oldest synagogue. Now it also has a Jewish museum, dedicated to the history of local Jewry. Clement Yong writes:

Located on the first floor of the synagogue’s neighbor, the Jacob Ballas Center, [the museum] covers the community’s history from the first Jews’ arrival in Singapore soon after it became a British colony in the early 1800s up to March of this year, when a twenty-year-old man was detained for planning a knife attack at the Maghain Aboth Synagogue.

The narrative it tells pauses at several key Jewish figures in Singapore’s history. A panel is dedicated to David Marshall, who was chief minister of pre-independence Singapore from 1955 to 1956, and a room to Jacob Ballas, . . . chairman of the Malaysia and Singapore Stock Exchange from 1964 to 1967. Other notable names include the former Supreme Court judge Joseph Grimberg, pioneering surgeon Yahya Cohen, and Sir Manasseh Meyer, a prominent businessman.

There are write-ups about Jewish rites and festivals in the museum so those interested can be given a crash course in Jewish culture. . . . One interesting tradition cited is the pouring of water on the back of a person’s car as he departs for the airport for good luck. After a boy is circumcised, the mother and child must also be on the same floor of the house for 40 days, and the child taken out to cross seven bridges.

Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam, who months before had stood in front of the synagogue in solidarity with the Jewish community after a planned attack on those leaving the synagogue was foiled, was guest of honor at the [museum’s] launch. “If you look at the roads [with names like] Frankel Estate, Meyer Road, . . . Jews have made a tremendous contribution,” . . .  he told reporters. . . . He also paid tribute to the seven Israeli advisers who came to train Singapore’s first soldiers.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.