The opening chapter of the first book of Maccabees complains of Jewish “transgressors of the law who seduced many” of their fellows. These transgressors “built a gymnasium in Jerusalem according to local custom, and did not circumcise their children, and left the holy covenant for heathen practices, and did wickedly in the eyes of God.” Cole Aronson reflects on this rejection of sports and athleticism on the part of pious Jews of the 2nd century BCE:

Throwing a discus can surely divert you from prayer and Torah study, but other things can do that also, and so I have to think the problem with this Jerusalem athletics center was more basic. Raising physical prowess from a military necessity into a society’s main form of nobility can teach contempt for the small, the fragile, and the sick. If muscles and speed are how your community says you ought to flourish, the frail among us will be absorbed into a spectating mass useful only as an audience for a mighty few.

Which is a shame, because one of the very best things about civilization is that it gives vulnerable people a chance at decent, dignified lives. Without walls, cops, and laws, everyone is a tribal warrior, or beholden to tribal warriors, or a victim of tribal warriors. The pagan Jews wanted to restore the warrior virtues to a softer form of the dominance they enjoy without restraint in savage times.

The Maccabees fought with heroic strength against the total exaltation of heroic strength.

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.”