According to a well-known talmudic tale, the 2nd-century sage Simon bar Yohai, wanted by the Romans for seditious comments, spent thirteen years hiding in a cave with his son Elazar. The two buried themselves in sand up to their necks and spent all their time studying Torah, nourished by a spring and a carob tree. Their emergence from the cave was celebrated on Sunday on the holiday of Lag ba-Omer, but in the Talmud’s telling it was a difficult transition, and Elazar’s subsequent life was far from one of straightforward saintliness.

Kate Rozansky examines the stories surrounding this father and son, and the three unnamed women who appear therein: Simon’s mother, his wife, and his daughter-in-law.

In rabbinic texts, Simon’s reputation for spiritual excellence is almost unparalleled, but [in legal disputes], he is often sidelined in favor of his more worldly peers. As Rabbi Binyamin Lau writes, this phenomenon “reminds us that halakhah is decided by those who are most rooted in the reality of this world.” Rabbi Simon rejects “the reality of this world” which, to him, is the realm of women and other distractions from Torah. Even when he reconciles himself to the world of the mundane, he only sees human beings―Jews―as valuable because they teach him Torah.

Elazar, on the other hand, vacillates wildly between the corporeal and the transcendent, between self-aggrandizement and self-mortification. This struggle causes him great suffering. It is only when he is close to death that he seems to find a kind of balance. Rather than forsake life in the world to come for temporal life, or temporal life for eternal life, Elazar, with the help of his wife finds a way to partake―if only briefly―of both worlds at the same time.

The tradition that grows from this assertion―that is, the halakhic world that the sages built―is doubtless messier and inconstant than the one Simon would seem to prefer. And yet rather than scorn the mundane, the Talmud adores it, bringing us back again and again to places where the holy and the temporal meet and our gross, corruptible selves brush up against eternity.

In 2003, the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, spooked by the American display of might in Iraq, decided to destroy or surrender his entire nuclear program. Informed observers have suggested that the deal he made with the U.S. should serve as a model for any agreement with Iran. Robert Joseph provides some useful background:

Gaddafi had convinced himself that Libya would be next on the U.S. target list after Iraq. There was no reason or need to threaten Libya with bombing as Gaddafi was quick to tell almost every visitor that he did not want to be Saddam Hussein. The images of Saddam being pulled from his spider hole . . . played on his mind.

President Bush’s goal was to have Libya serve as an alternative model to Iraq. Instead of war, proliferators would give up their nuclear programs in exchange for relief from economic and political sanctions.

Any outcome that permits Iran to enrich uranium at any level will fail the one standard that President Trump has established: Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Limiting enrichment even to low levels will allow Iran to break out of the agreement at any time, no matter what the agreement says.

Iran is not a normal government that observes the rules of international behavior or fair “dealmaking.” This is a regime that relies on regional terror and brutal repression of its citizens to stay in power. It has a long history of using negotiations to expand its nuclear program. Its negotiating tactics are clear: extend the negotiations as long as possible and meet any concession with more demands.