In the Western popular imagination, the Middle Ages remain a benighted time of superstition, before scientific advancement began. But in Jewish history, they were a golden age of religious rationalism, when rabbis tried to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy and the most advanced secular knowledge of their day with biblical and talmudic teachings. Natan Slifkin argues that much of contemporary Orthodox thought, especially in ḥaredi circles, has lost touch with these strains of the tradition, drawing primarily on the mystical ideas of later centuries. Without denying the value of Jewish mysticism, Slifkin believes Jews have neglected rationalism at their own peril. He explains why in a discussion with Shmuel Rosner. (Audio, 30 minutes.)

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].