On Wednesday, Jews the world over celebrated the conclusion of the seven-year cycle of Talmud study known as daf yomi [“daily page”]. Begun by the Polish rabbi Meir Shapiro in 1923, the regimen involves the study of a single folio page of the Babylonian Talmud every day on a fixed schedule. The editors of the New York Sun write:

[The daf yomi] prospered over what, for Jews, stands as one of the most tumultuous centuries in the three-and-a-half millennia since Sinai. Through that blood-soaked span, it turns out that Jewish learning spread like wildfire.

In America, the [Orthodox group] Agudath Israel eventually had to rent Madison Square Garden to accommodate all those who wanted to be together for the final reading of the daf yomi cycle. It is always a memorable event; Torah sages, in black robes, gray beards, and elegant hats, are seated on a vast dais. The bleachers are filled with thousands who follow along in the Hebrew and Aramaic. By 2012, the event had grown so enormous that Madison Square Garden was too small. So it was moved to the Meadowlands stadium, where attendance [likely came] close to 100,000.

The event in New Jersey, moreover, will be just one gathering among many taking place, on the same page and day, around the world. What an answer to the anti-Semitism that is sputtering in America, Europe, and the Middle East. The haters may strike from the left and right. It turns out, though, that they have not been able to force a retreat from Judaism and the study of its texts.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”