Stepping down after fifteen years from his post as editor of the Orthodox academic and theological journal Tradition, Shalom Carmy reflects on the future of Orthodox thought in an America very different from the one that existed at the time of the journal’s founding in 1958:

Since then the conflict between dominant secular attitudes and philosophies and the foundations of a Torah outlook has become sharper, broader, and deeper. The common ground between Judaism and the ideas taken for granted by secular elites is progressively eroding. Consider the ethos of the family, the understanding of human nature and human destiny, the absoluteness of religious commitment and many other fundamental principles. The profound incompatibilities manifest themselves not only via the mass media and the classroom but behaviorally and spiritually as well.

Maybe this is tolerable. Perhaps American Orthodox institutions and communities can get along by compartmentalizing, upholding one set of implicit standards for individuals in the formal religious sphere while conforming to another set of standards the rest of the time. True, this is neither healthy nor, for many individuals, possible. Nonetheless, so long as the number of defections is relatively low, one may accept them with a degree of resignation, ascribing bad outcomes to psychological problems, social and family dysfunction, and economic pressures and preoccupations, and act as if these are unconnected to our intellectual deficiencies.

If, however, the goal is not only social survival but spiritual growth in our communities, the decline in Orthodox intellectual life [since the mid-20th century] is unfortunate. A promising young rabbi [and] scholar, pondering that decline, recently wondered whether the kind of Orthodox intellectual life he had envisioned and prepared for was a lost cause. Is there more for him to do than to salvage what he can of the minority of receptive individuals—his term was “surviving remnant” [in reference to Ezra 9:14]—and otherwise keep the machinery of Orthodoxy running?

Yet Carmy unexpectedly sees a more hopeful approach in an essay by the great poet (and sometime anti-Semite) T.S. Eliot, who wrote that “there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory.”

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.