Recited twice-daily by observant Jews, Deuteronomy 6:4-9 begins with the famous, “Hear O Israel the Lord is Your God the Lord is One,” and continues with the commandments to love God, to teach “these words” to one’s children, and to preserve them through ritual. Straightforward though it may seem, this passage is filled with ambiguities, from the question of whether to read the opening words as “the Lord is One” or “the Lord alone” to the meaning of loving the Deity. Jon D. Levenson explores these ambiguities in conversation with Rony Kozman and Will Kynes. They then turn to the remainder of Deuteronomy 6, and then to Deuteronomy 10. (Video, 68 minutes. To listen on the web or in podcast form, click on the link below.)

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.