On July 8, notices circulated in Israeli ḥaredi communities warning that it was both dangerous and forbidden by halakhah to drink water between the hours of 2:00 and 3:00 PM. Natan Slifkin explains:

[The announcements] caught a lot of people by surprise. The reason given was even more surprising: that this hour is the transition point of the summer solstice, which, together with the winter solstice and the equinoxes, divides the year into four quarters. As such, it is a time when the angels change shifts, and while there is nobody on duty [between the end of one shift and the beginning of the next], the Angel of Death can poison the water.

Before you rush to dismiss this out of hand, you should also be aware that while this is not mentioned in the Talmud, it is mentioned by no less an authority than Rabbi Moses Isserles [a 16th-century Polish rabbi whose rulings are traditionally regarded as authoritative for Ashkenazi Jews], who notes that this is a “basic” custom that is a tradition from many great authorities. . . .

[But] this is a practice that pretty much nobody has cared about, or known about, for hundreds of years, [even within ultra-Orthodox communities]. . . . People who are resurrecting the prohibition against drinking water during the solstice are not actually afraid that it is dangerous. . . . These people just want to do what they think makes them [pious].

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”