Investigating the contrast between Jewish universalism and Jewish particularism, Moshe Koppel takes as archetypes “Heidi,” a liberal graduate student he met at Princeton University, and the members of the small ḥasidic synagogue (shtibl) that his grandfather attended. Koppel writes:

I was twenty-three, out of yeshiva for the first time; Heidi . . . had taken it upon herself to educate me about the special duties of the Jewish people to humanity. “The lesson of the Holocaust,” [she told me], “is that we Jews must never put our parochial interests ahead of others’ interests. We should know better than anyone what happens when that lesson isn’t learned.” I had never encountered [this] orthodoxy before.

My own thoughts about Jewish obligation were not quite so pious as those of my interlocutor. My first lessons in the matter were learned in the Gerer shtibl where my grandfather davened. The members of this shul were Polish Holocaust survivors. . . . They were worldly, cynical, [and] fiercely independent, but chose to remain loyal to the ways of their fathers. Some were [fully committed] Gerer Ḥasidim for whom [Judaism] could never be the same after the war, but many—maybe most—could better be thought of as ex-Ḥasidim who wouldn’t think of jumping ship after what had happened to their families. . . .

The Gerer shtibl gang were intense; they were angry; they could be funny in a biting sort of way; they were devoted. But one thing they had no patience for was high-minded pieties. They despised pompousness and self-righteousness. Their devotion to Yiddishkayt [Jewishness] as a way of life and to the Jews as a people was as natural and instinctive as drawing breath. . . .

My main argument [is] not that the cosmopolitan critique of the Judaism [of that shtibl] misrepresents Judaism itself (though it does). Rather, this critique is rooted in a number of cultural blind spots, including a blinkered understanding of the scope of morality, of the preferability of social norms to laws, and of the extent to which certain beliefs are unavoidable. In short, [one worldview is] narrow and orthodox and the other is worldly and realistic. [But] most people are confused about which is which.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.