At Passover seders, numerous Jewish families will be singing the Aramaic song Ḥad Gadya (“Only a Goat”), which includes the line, “Then came a cat and ate the goat that my father bought for two zuzim.” While the Hebrew Bible has numerous references to goats, it has none to cats—although the animal was certainly known to ancient Israelites. Joshua Schwartz examines the evidence:

Cats have been excavated in Jericho from as early as the pre-pottery Neolithic period (before 6000 BCE). At most, these ancient cats may have co-existed in some form with humans, although they were not yet domesticated.

To date, we have found no evidence that the Israelites kept cats in their houses. The scant archaeological evidence of cats in a domestic context from Bronze and Iron Age Israel shows no connection to the Israelites, and the Bible never mentions cats. This silence stands in contrast with the evidence from Egypt, where cats were dearly loved and often depicted in wall paintings and bronzes from the mid-second through late-first millennium BCE.

Schwartz then moves on to the Talmud:

The Persians who ruled talmudic Babylonia despised cats; they were considered khrafstra, noxious creatures, not much better than the vermin they destroyed. The talmudic traditions about cats suggest a slightly more mixed view of cats. The only talmudic tradition that directly praises cats is cited by the Palestinian sage Rabbi Yohanan (3rd century CE): “If the Torah had not been given, we could have learned modesty from the cat.”

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.