This week’s Torah reding of M’tsora (Leviticus 14:1–15:33) deals at length with regulations pertaining to a person diagnosed with a dermatological ailment usually translated as leprosy. To the talmudic sages, this disease was a divine punishment for the sin of wicked speech—more precisely, any sort of disparagement of a fellow person. Reflecting on why rabbinic thought ascribes such gravity to this particular sin, Jonathan Sacks seeks the answer in the Jewish view of speech itself:

Last Friday, yet another mysterious explosion rocked a military site in the Islamic Republic, in what seems to be a coordinated attempt to sabotage Iranian nuclear ambitions—although there remains a possibility that these incidents could be accidental, and related only by coincidence. For their part, the ayatollahs have blamed Israel, and not unreasonably. Eli Lake comments on what this all means for the future of American attempts to limit the Iranian nuclear program: