In haredi circles, watching sports is an activity that is generally frowned upon—above all, it is a distraction from the sacred pursuit of Torah study. Yet it is also at least tacitly considered less pernicious than many other forms of worldly entertainment. Enough Haredim now watch the Super Bowl that an Orthodox organization based in New York City, called Chazaq, offers a “Halftime for Torah” consisting of online lectures by popular rabbis and lay speakers. The idea is to get devout Super Bowl-watchers away from the immodest displays of the halftime show, and to make sure they intersperse their football with some Torah study. Ben Rubin describes the idea:

Rabbi Elya Brudny, a scholar at the Mir yeshiva in Brooklyn and a member of Agudath Israel’s Council of Torah Sages, . . . said that allowing children to watch the Super Bowl is not ideal, especially the halftime show. [But] Brudny acknowledged that among some haredi families, concessions must be made to reality. In some cases, if children aren’t allowed to watch the Super Bowl at home, they’ll watch it at friends’ homes instead. For those people, Brudny said, he had a better solution.

“Bring an outside device, just for tonight,” he said, referring to those who don’t otherwise have television sets at home. “And watch the football as a family.”

The “Halftime for Torah” event has been taking place at least since 2019. Last year, [a representative of Chazaq] said, there were 3,000 separate devices tuned into the program. He estimated that those connections represented around 10,000 people, as viewers tend to watch in group settings.

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.