On Monday, a total eclipse of the sun will pass over Mexico, the U.S., and Canada. Mira Fox delves into the ways Jewish texts have understood this celestial phenomenon, suggesting that biblical passages such as Amos 8:9, “I will make the sun set at noon, I will darken the earth on a sunny day,” refer to eclipses. She then turns to later sources, which tend to see an eclipse as a bad omen, but not always:

In the talmudic tractate Sukkah, for example, the rabbis say that an eclipse where the sun appears red means war is coming, while a black shadow predicts famine. Thankfully, not all of the meanings are quite so threatening. Later in the same tractate, the sages say that solar eclipses are sometimes the Heavens’ eulogy for someone who was not mourned properly. . . . Other times, they’re a punishment for people chopping down fruit-bearing trees, or forging false documents, or not coming to the aid of a woman being raped.

Regardless, though, solar eclipses seem to always be some sort of marker of bad behavior. The Maharal [Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, ca. 1512–1609], a renowned talmudic scholar from Prague, wrote that if humanity did not sin, we would live in eternal light. That’s why, while most natural phenomena have blessings in Judaism—there are a specific brakhot for rainbows, as well as thunder, lightning, and earthquakes—eclipses don’t merit a prayer.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.