As his Yom Kippur sermon this year, Rabbi David Wolpe shared with his congregation a letter he had just written to his father, himself a pulpit rabbi, who died seven years ago. Among other recollections, family dinners—always at 5:30, in case his father had to return to the synagogue—stand out:

If you ask what I miss most about my childhood it isn’t the field or the basketball court, it’s the dinner table. That’s when we would get stories—everyone from Samuel Johnson to Rebbe Naḥman [of Bratslav] to your teachers at the seminary. Just the other day I told someone your story about [the Jewish Theological Seminary’s distinguished professors] Alexander Marx and Louis Ginzberg and the elevator. How Ginzberg, whom you and your classmates called “the old man” and you always thought of as the greatest scholar you had ever known, invited Marx for Shabbat. And Marx realized that he lived on an upper floor so he asked Ginzberg if it was permitted to use the elevator on Shabbat and Ginzberg said “no.”

So Marx dutifully trudged up all the many flights of steps, only to see Ginzberg stepping out of the elevator. “I thought you said it was not allowed!” exclaimed Marx. “But I didn’t ask,” said Ginzberg.

You loved that story. But you loved so many stories, relished them, rolled them around your tongue. One would lead to the next. . . .

One thing I knew would happen and could not change is that every day there are things I want to ask you. Sometimes I think I might know the answer but would still like to ask you. . . .

And then there are sudden glimmers. How often since you are gone have I opened a book in my library and discovered your notes or underlining on the pages? It brings me closer to you, although it is agonizing sometimes that I cannot ask—what were you thinking when you wrote this? Why did you read this, and did you like it? And now every time I underline a book I wonder as well: will [my daughter] Samara have the same experience one day, open this book and wonder what I was thinking?

Last week, the New York Times reported, based on unnamed sources within the Trump administration, that the president had asked Israel not to carry out a planned strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That is, somebody deliberately gave this information to the press, which later tried to confirm it by speaking with other officials. Amit Segal writes that, “according to figures in Israel’s security establishment,” this is “the most serious leak in Israel’s history.” He explains:

As Israel is reportedly planning what may well be one of its most consequential military operations ever, the New York Times lays out for the Iranians what Israel will target, when it will carry out the operation, and how. That’s not just any other leak.

Seth Mandel looks into the leaker’s logic:

The primary purpose of the [Times] article is not as a record of internal deliberations but as an instrument of policy itself. Namely, to obstruct future U.S. and Israeli foreign policy by divulging enough details of Israel’s plans in order to protect Iran’s nuclear sites. The idea is to force Israeli planners back to the drawing board, thus delaying a possible future strike on Iran until Iranian air defenses have been rebuilt.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play, more or less, to help Iran torpedo American action.

The leaker, Mandel explains—and the Times itself implies—is likely aligned with the faction in the administration that wants to see the U.S. retreat from the world stage and from its alliance with Israel, a faction that includes Vice-President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the president’s own chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Yet it’s also possible, if less likely, that the plans were leaked in support of administration policy rather than out of factional infighting. Eliezer Marom argues that the leak was “part of the negotiations and serves to clarify to the Iranians that there is a real attack plan that Trump stopped at the last moment to conduct negotiations.”