In her book Strange Rites—which she previously discussed on the Mosaic podcast—Tara Isabella Burton explores the various quasi-religious clusters of ideas that have sprung up in post-Christian America, from “wellness” and “fandom” to witchcraft and radical political activism. At the heart of all of them is Americans’ burning desire for “a spiritual identity and surrounding community that precisely reflects their values, their moral and social intuitions, their lived experience, and their sense of self.” Michal Leibowitz notes in her review:

Although Burton doesn’t much discuss it, this intuitional theology is also trickling back into explicitly religious (or at least relig-ish) spaces. How different, really, is the exhortation from the SoulCycle leader—“It’s about you. . . . Your perk. Your goals. Your drive . . .”—from an advertisement for Stanford Hillel’s “Jewish Incubator Fellowship” that I recently ran across: “It’s about YOU. Your interests, your experiences, your passions, your goals. . . . You’re the driving force behind what happens here”?

But, asks Leibowitz, are these “bespoke” forms of religiosity really delivering what they promise?

[R]eading Burton’s book, one can’t help wondering whether such attempts to reclaim this enchanted world while rejecting any kind of external authority fall victim to a more insidious kind of force. At the core of the intuitional creed Burton discusses is a hidden premise, gestured at but never quite articulated: the idea that we have access to our deepest, most authentic intuitions and desires—and that we are capable of separating these deepest selves from consumer culture, social pressure, newsrooms, and Internet feeds. And yet, when we retweet a popular political opinion or attend a SoulCycle class or cleanse our house with sage, are we really expressing our most authentic selves and so pursuing the good? Or are we . . . anchorless and tossed about by the brands, ideologies, and communities we think we choose?

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.”