Some readers of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice have noted the parallel between the heroine Portia’s speech to the Jewish moneylender Shylock and the opening of Moses’ valedictory song in Deuteronomy, which is read in synagogues tomorrow. Thus Portia opens with “The quality of mercy is not strained./ It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,” and Moses with “Give ear, O heavens, let me speak;/ Let the earth hear the words I utter!/ May my discourse come down as the rain,/ My speech distill as the dew.” But despite this biblical resonance, Kate Rozansky argues, Portia’s claims here diverge greatly from the biblical notion of mercy—at least the way Jews have understood it:

She says the “quality” of mercy is not “strained”—that is, constrained. Portia argues that your mercy should flow freely from you, like rain from the sky. If someone were forcing you to be merciful, it would sully the purity of your mercy. If I give you $100 because I owe you, I’m just doing what I have to do. If I give you 100 dollars for no reason, I’m extraordinary. Godlike, even.

When Jews entreat God’s mercy, in our sliḥot [penitential prayers], and in our prayers on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we reminded God over and over and over again that God MUST be merciful to us. We remind God of the promises God has made to us over the generations. Remember the covenant. Remember that we are your people. Remember the merit of our ancestors.

God’s mercy does not flow from His infinite power or His infinite freedom, but from God’s relationship with us. God’s choice whether or not to grant mercy is constrained by His own promises. The God of the Torah is an obligated God, and the Jews owe our continued existence as a people—and perhaps the existence of the whole world, to this fact.

Portia was wrong. For Jews, the quality of mercy is constrained. Our acts of mercy are not acts of superfluity that make us extraordinary. They are obligations that force us to be our truest selves.

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.