One of the great tensions in Western moral philosophy is between the Aristotelian ideal of ethics based on the cultivation of proper moral virtue and the Jewish understanding of ethics as adherence to commandments. As a devotee of both Aristotle and the Talmud, Moses Maimonides tried repeatedly to reconcile the two approaches. But, argues Abraham Socher, Maimonides leaves unresolved the incompatibility between Aristotelian ethics and the Jewish ideal of t’shuvah (“repentance,” or, more literally, “return”), so central to the Days of Awe—even though he himself wrote one of the most penetrating expositions of this ideal. Socher explains:

Examining the State Department spokesman Ned Price’s remarks on Monday regarding Washington’s approach to the Islamic Republic, Elliott Abrams detects two crucial points on which the administration has been unclear. The first relates to Price’s comment that, “if Iran returns to full compliance with the [2015 nuclear] deal, the United States would be prepared to do the same.”