According to Jewish tradition, Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the second set of Tablets—a symbol of God’s reconciliation with the Israelites after they worshipped the golden calf—on the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, which is Yom Kippur, a day thus dedicated to atonement and forgiveness. Using this passage as a point of departure, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik analyzed the meaning of sin and repentance in this 1974 lecture, given nearly one year after Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack on the Jewish state on its most sacred holiday. Soloveitchik, as was his wont, drew here on his grandfather’s system of talmudic analysis, which makes much of the legal distinction between a person, or gavra, and an object, or ḥeftsah. (Video, 28 minutes. Yiddish with English subtitles.)

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.