So-called Messianic Judaism is a Christian sect whose members observe some Jewish customs and rituals, and make occasional use of Hebrew. For many of its practitioners, it is a means of proselytizing to Jews. But Richard Cortes—and his initially reluctant wife Alpha—came to Messianic Judaism after a crisis of faith in the Pentecostal Christianity in which he was raised. And that is only the beginning of their unusual story. Asaf Elia-Shalev writes:

By last year, Cortes was leading a thriving Messianic community in a remote mountain town in Arizona [called Show Low]. Drawing from the area’s heavily Mormon and evangelical population, Cortes’s congregation was seen as a successful outpost in the wider Messianic movement.

Yet an uneasy feeling was gnawing at Cortes. Messianism promised that he would find proof of Jesus’ divinity within Jewish texts, but the harder he looked, the less he could see, leaving him in spiritual crisis. He was confused about how to proceed and terrified about the reaction of his wife and congregants to his internal transformation, but he knew he had to make a change.

[In August], Cortes and twenty of his followers converted to Judaism. Dozens of others in his community are considering doing the same.

Their mass conversion is an event with few precedents in Jewish history and a seemingly unlikely outcome for a group of people who live hours away from any Jewish community. The presence in Phoenix of a rabbi with an open mind and unusual point of view and the shifting of Jewish life online because of the pandemic opened doors that might otherwise have been closed.

When he called upon Hamas to end the war and release the hostages last week, the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas was also getting ready for a reshuffle within his regime. On Saturday, he appointed Hussein al-Sheikh deputy president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is intimately tied to the PA itself. Al-Sheikh would therefore succeed Abbas—who is eighty-nine and reportedly in ill health—as head of the PLO if he should die or become incapacitated, and be positioned to succeed him as head of the PA as well.

Al-Sheikh spent eleven years in an Israeli prison and, writes Maurice Hirsch, was involved in planning a 2002 Jerusalem suicide bombing that killed three. Moreover, Hirsch writes, he “does not enjoy broad Palestinian popularity or support.”

Still, by appointing Al-Sheikh, Abbas has taken a step in the internal reforms he inaugurated last year in the hope that he could prove to the Biden administration and other relevant players that the PA was up to the task of governing the Gaza Strip. Neomi Neumann writes:

Abbas’s motivation for reform also appears rooted in the need to meet the expectations of Arab and European donors without compromising his authority. On April 14, the EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas approved a three-year aid package worth 1.6 billion euros, including 620 million euros in direct budget support tied to reforms. Meanwhile, the French president Emmanuel Macron held a call with Abbas [earlier this month] and noted afterward that reforms are essential for the PA to be seen as a viable governing authority for Gaza—a telling remark given reports that Paris may soon recognize “the state of Palestine.”

In some cases, reforms appear targeted at specific regional partners. The idea of appointing a vice-president originated with Saudi Arabia.

In the near term, Abbas’s main goal appears to be preserving Arab and European support ahead of a major international conference in New York this June.