Visiting the Polish city of Białystok, Thaïs Miller found herself sitting in on a Yiddish class. “I had attended many Yiddish classes before,” she writes, “but not one in my grandmother’s hometown and not one in which I was the only Jewish person in the room, including the instructors.” Miller listened to the students explain why they were taking the class, and helped them with the alphabet. After some intense translating, the instructor switched to a lighter activity:

The teaching assistant brought in a large box of chocolate cupcakes, each of which was decorated with a Yiddish letter printed on top in chocolate. The class had been full of conversation, but now everyone sat in complete silence, eating their aleph-beys cupcakes.

Toward the end of the lesson, [the instructor] explained, in Polish, the significance of every person receiving one Yiddish letter. “There was once a Jewish ritual in which the entire community participated in the writing of letters on a new Torah scroll.”

He then turned to me. “Have you ever heard about this practice?”

“Avade.” Of course, I said to him in Yiddish. And I added in English, “I’ve done it.” Mikołaj looked at me in incomprehension. . . . After the class, I messaged a friend about it. He said, “I imagine it’s a bit like a class in hieroglyphics, with you being the only pharaoh in the room.”

Ron Ben-Yishai, reporting from a visit to IDF forces in the Gaza Strip, analyzes the state of the fighting, and “the persistent challenge of eradicating an entrenched enemy in a complex urban terrain.”

Hamas, sensing the war’s end, is mounting a final effort to inflict casualties. The IDF now controls 65 percent of Gaza’s territory operationally, with observation, fire dominance, and relative freedom of movement, alongside systematic tunnel destruction. . . . Major P, a reserve company commander, says, “It’s frustrating to hear at home that we’re stagnating. The public doesn’t get that if we stop, Hamas will recover.”

Senior IDF officers cite two reasons for the slow progress: meticulous care to protect hostages, requiring cautious movement and constant intelligence gathering, and avoiding heavy losses, with 22 soldiers killed since June.

Two-and-a-half of Hamas’s five brigades have been dismantled, yet a new hostage deal and IDF withdrawal could allow Hamas to regroup. . . . Hamas is at its lowest military and governing point since its founding, reduced to a fragmented guerrilla force. Yet, without complete disarmament and infrastructure destruction, it could resurge as a threat in years.

At the same time, Ben-Yishai observes, not everything hangs on the IDF:

According to the Southern Command chief Major General Yaron Finkelman, the IDF is close to completing its objectives. In classical military terms, “defeat” means the enemy surrenders—but with a jihadist organization, the benchmark is its ability to operate against Israel.

Despite [the IDF’s] battlefield successes, the broader strategic outcome—especially regarding the hostages—now hinges on decisions from the political leadership. “We’ve done our part,” said a senior officer. “We’ve reached a crossroads where the government must decide where it wants to go—both on the hostage issue and on Gaza’s future.”