The baroque theories of anti-Semites often link Jews to the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and other favorite subjects of conspiracists. The Boston rabbi Marvin Antelman was not the first Jew to promulgate such ideas, but he may have been the only one to use them to detect a plot to undermine Orthodox Judaism from within. Zvi Leshem writes:

In his work Antelman, who also held a PhD in chemistry, painted a detailed conspiracy theory incorporating the Jewish Enlightenment, Reform Judaism, and Communism, tracing their origins back to the [17th-century] false messianic movement of Shabbtai Zvi, his Polish successor Jacob Frank, the Illuminati, and the Jacobins [of Revolutionary France].

Here is where Gershom Scholem, the preeminent scholar of the Sabbatean movement, enters our story. Antelman [cites] him regarding the possible influence of Sabbateanism on the development of the Jewish Enlightenment and Reform Judaism, but goes well beyond Scholem’s suggestion of a possible cultural influence; Antelman lunges into a . . . conspiracy theory so complex as to be beyond the scope of this article.

Antelman eventually went on to serve as “chief justice” of the “Supreme Rabbinical Court of America” that he founded. Among the more dramatic acts of the court was the excommunication of the American secretary of state Henry Kissinger in 1976.

Among Scholem’s papers are several letters from Antelman along with his 1974 book, To Eliminate the Opiate: The Frightening Inside Story of Communist and Conspiratorial Group Efforts to Destroy Jews, Judaism, and Israel—in which Scholem wrote, in English, “Nonsense based on me!!!”

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.