According to Ashkenazi custom, the Hebrew hymn “It Came to Pass at Midnight” is recited near the end of the seder. Laura Lieber analyzes this sophisticated poetic work, originally composed to be read in synagogues, and tells its author’s story:

The song . . . was not written for [the seder] night, nor is it an independent composition. Instead, it was part seven of the poem Oney fitrey raḥamatayim (The Vigor of the Openers of Wombs), composed by Yannai (late 5th–early 6th century CE), the first Hebrew poet to use end-rhyme and to sign his works with a signature acrostic.

Most of Yannai’s poems, including this one, belong to the genre known as q’dushta’ot, [singular q’dushta]. In the synagogues of the Land of Israel (up until the 7th century CE or so), the weekly Torah reading was divided up into s’darim [singular sidra], much smaller units than the Babylonian parashiyot that we use today, and the Torah was completed not yearly but roughly twice every seven years. Yannai composed a different q’dushta for each sidra, to be recited on the Shabbat when the sidra was read in synagogue.

The poem “The Vigor of the Openers of Wombs,” was composed to be recited for the sidra “And It Came to Pass at Midnight” (Exodus 12:29–51). The sidra tells the story of the death of the firstborn and Israel’s escape from Egypt, and this liturgical poem embellishes these themes, which are central to the Passover story; these affinities explain why Yannai’s poem became connected to the Passover liturgy. Indeed, because of its association with Passover, this composition ended up as Yannai’s only surviving poem until his voluminous and revelatory body of work was rediscovered in the Cairo Genizah.

On the same day the cease-fire went into effect along the Israel-Lebanon border, rebel forces launched an unexpected offensive, and within a few days captured much of Aleppo. This lightening advance originated in the northwestern part of the country, which has been relatively quiet over the past four years, since Bashar al-Assad effectively gave up on restoring control over the remaining rebel enclaves in the area. The fighting comes at an inopportune moment for the powers that Damascus has called on for help in the past: Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and Hizballah has been shattered.

But the situation is extremely complex. David Wurmser points to the dangers that lie ahead:

The desolation wrought on Hizballah by Israel, and the humiliation inflicted on Iran, has not only left the Iranian axis exposed to Israeli power and further withering. It has altered the strategic tectonics of the Middle East. The story is not just Iran anymore. The region is showing the first signs of tremendous geopolitical change. And the plates are beginning to move.

The removal of the religious-totalitarian tyranny of the Iranian regime remains the greatest strategic imperative in the region for the United States and its allies, foremost among whom stands Israel. . . . However, as Iran’s regime descends into the graveyard of history, it is important not to neglect the emergence of other, new threats. navigating the new reality taking shape.

The retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of Islamic State is an early skirmish in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS—a descendant of Nusra Front led by Abu Mohammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of al-Qaeda’s system and cobbled together of IS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey.