In 2022, a Jewish couple in Tennessee sued the Holston United Methodist Home for Children for refusing to enroll them in its certification program for parents planning to adopt children—on the grounds that it only offers its services to fellow Christians. The suit aims to challenge a 2020 state law that permits denominational adoption agencies to discriminate on religious grounds. Avi Shafran, an Orthodox rabbi and activist, explains why he believes the law should be upheld:

I want religious adoption agencies to be able to choose to limit their services to those whose lives are in consonance with the agencies’ missions. There are already established religious “ministerial” and “conscience” exceptions to many anti-discrimination statutes. It seems reasonable to me that religious adoption agencies, too, should be able to maintain their religious values.

This freedom is especially compelling for Jewish adoption agencies, because, while Judaism may be a faith, being a Jew is an identity. . . . And so, believing Jews consider it incumbent upon them to do all they can to ensure that all of their relatives, no matter how distant, are aware of their identity as part of the Jewish people. And thus, for us, it is vitally important for a religious Jewish adoption agency to be able to place Jewish children with Jewish families, who will provide an environment conducive to the adoptees’ understanding of their identity.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.