This week’s Torah reading of Lekh-l’khah contains the Torah’s first reference to the city of Shechem—a place that comes up in multiple incidents throughout Genesis, and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. According to the Babylonian Talmud, it is “a place ordained for calamity,” because of several tragic events that took place there. Tamar Weissman takes a careful look at this assertion, and Shechem’s paradoxes:

Each of Shechem’s tragic stories always starts promisingly. . . . For all of the negative associations cataloged [by] the Talmud, Shechem is equally evocative of fraternity, and the yearning to find commonality.

The calamities associated with Shechem are all the more shocking because we are oriented to expect the warmth of brit (covenant) there. This is because the Bible’s introduction of the city is so redolent with promise. Shechem was the very first place that Abraham arrived in his destined land; it was the very first place where God ever appeared to him in a vision (Genesis 12:6-7). . . . In that formative moment, when dreams and plans materialized into firm reality, when Abraham’s feet were on the good plain between two mountains in the land destined for him, God assured him: “to your seed will I give this land.” So began the love story between Abraham’s family and the land of Canaan, there in Shechem. And so we are primed to consider Shechem as a special place, a redemptive place.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.