In a recently published collection of essays, Shlomo Riskin—a leading American-born Israeli rabbi—tackles many of the thorniest issues confronting Modern Orthodoxy. David Berger, who has much praise for the book and its author in his review, nevertheless takes issue with Riskin’s attempt to define away the talmudic category of the apikoros, or heretic:

Riskin poses the question “who’s an apikoros?” and essentially responds, “no one.” The argument is that it is wrong to identify anyone as a heretic because it is difficult to define what one is: Maimonides himself was accused of heresy; the Talmud defines heresy by such actions as scorning a scholar, but not by the criterion of unacceptable beliefs; [the early-20th-century sage Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz] said that no one today should be subject to the treatment inflicted on a heretic; and contemporary theological deviationists are generally the product of their education and environment. It is also pragmatically self-defeating to condemn rather than build.

Much of this is, no doubt, correct, but some of it is misleading. The position that heresy should be defined by actions and not beliefs sidesteps the [talmudic passage] (quoted in full by Riskin) which lists a number of beliefs that exclude the one who holds them from the World to Come. While there is much to be said for a tolerant attitude toward contemporary adherents of heretical beliefs, there is great danger in blurring or erasing the category of heresy itself. This essay does not quite do this, but it comes perilously close. The issue is of acute importance nowadays, when we are witness to an assault on the position that beliefs matter at all, and when adherents of positions that are heretical by any historical measure are welcomed—especially in the religious-Zionist community in Israel—as respected Orthodox figures. A religion, certainly an Orthodox version of a religion, requires boundaries.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.