Born in Buenos Aires to a family of Damascene Jews, the rabbi and polymath José Faur died this summer at the age of eighty-six. His great-niece, the scholar Mijal Bitton, reflects on his unusual intellectual life, informed by both Sephardi and Ashkenazi rabbinic traditions as well as postmodern philosophy:

There were many aspects to Faur’s [understanding of the] rabbinic tradition. One of the important aspects central to his thinking was a focus on methodology. For Faur, it was not enough to have information, one needed to acquire wisdom in a systematic way and follow consistent and coherent rules for the application of knowledge. . . .

This approach was different from many . . . streams in the Jewish tradition, according to which one can demonstrate that something is forbidden or permitted by citing some prominent names whose statements have been memorized, without explaining the statements themselves. . . . [S]tudents of Faur would not believe it is enough to quote Maimonides and cite his authority. Rather, they are tasked with following Maimonides’ carefully laid out journey through the sources and understanding his conclusions.

The key to understanding Faur’s [theology] is in approaching God as a writer. Once God is a writer, then anything that God created—be it people, nature, galaxies, or the Torah itself—is a text that we are supposed to read. Faur’s genius was in utilizing the tools and techniques of the academic study of semiotics to generate new ways of approaching the Torah and the world as a “text” meant to be read by us. But [Faur] made no use of scholars like, say, Michel Foucault, who sought to deconstruct discourse in search of genealogies and power dynamics.

When he called upon Hamas to end the war and release the hostages last week, the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas was also getting ready for a reshuffle within his regime. On Saturday, he appointed Hussein al-Sheikh deputy president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is intimately tied to the PA itself. Al-Sheikh would therefore succeed Abbas—who is eighty-nine and reportedly in ill health—as head of the PLO if he should die or become incapacitated, and be positioned to succeed him as head of the PA as well.

Al-Sheikh spent eleven years in an Israeli prison and, writes Maurice Hirsch, was involved in planning a 2002 Jerusalem suicide bombing that killed three. Moreover, Hirsch writes, he “does not enjoy broad Palestinian popularity or support.”

Still, by appointing Al-Sheikh, Abbas has taken a step in the internal reforms he inaugurated last year in the hope that he could prove to the Biden administration and other relevant players that the PA was up to the task of governing the Gaza Strip. Neomi Neumann writes:

Abbas’s motivation for reform also appears rooted in the need to meet the expectations of Arab and European donors without compromising his authority. On April 14, the EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas approved a three-year aid package worth 1.6 billion euros, including 620 million euros in direct budget support tied to reforms. Meanwhile, the French president Emmanuel Macron held a call with Abbas [earlier this month] and noted afterward that reforms are essential for the PA to be seen as a viable governing authority for Gaza—a telling remark given reports that Paris may soon recognize “the state of Palestine.”

In some cases, reforms appear targeted at specific regional partners. The idea of appointing a vice-president originated with Saudi Arabia.

In the near term, Abbas’s main goal appears to be preserving Arab and European support ahead of a major international conference in New York this June.