This year, April 9 was—on both the Hebrew and the Gregorian calendars—the 30th anniversary of the death of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, one of the most outstanding thinkers, and Orthodox spiritual leaders, of postwar American Jewry. Jeffrey Saks reflects on the legacy of this great teacher, whom he refers to, as is convention, as “the Rav,” the rabbi par excellence.

Arriving at my own commitment to Jewish life and observance during those twilight years when he was no longer on the public stage yet omnipresent in American Modern Orthodoxy, much of who I became as a religious person was shaped by the Rav’s Torah and thought as filtered through his students and his writing. If, as C.S. Lewis was purported to have said, “we read to know we are not alone,” I read the Rav to know that I was not alone in my loneliness.

Among the most important lessons that I took away from those years was, first, the idea that we have nothing to fear. Torah (or perhaps in the Rav’s term, halakhah, broadly defined) would be more than capable of grappling with whatever challenge may arise in my adolescent (and later more mature) mind; and even when the answers are not always readily apparent, I could take comfort in the idea that others before me had thought about the problem, continued to think about it, and, in the paraphrase of some Yiddish expression I could not then have known, it would not prove fatal.

Second, and more significantly, the Rav’s model created a permission structure for faith. It offered the promise that motivated by love and not fear, my decisions leading in one direction did not mean severing ties with the world, family, and a version of my own self. The Rav’s message allowed me entrée to the covenantal community knowing that I could remain “at home,” and even be called back to the majestic realm; it bound the two sides and selves together with the “connective ivy” of the halakhah. It is my belief that the power and impact of the Rav’s teachings, in these ways and other future directions that we may scarcely be able to imagine today, will continue to vivify Jewish life and learning for many, many generations to come.

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.”