Next year will mark the 450th anniversary of the death of Joseph Karo (1488–1575), author of the code of Jewish law known as the Shulhan Arukh (literally, “The Set Table”). Prior to its publication, there were several important works that tried to systematize the unwieldly corpus of talmudic jurisprudence, and there have been many more since. But this book carefully synthesizes its predecessors, and every one of its successors is on some level a commentary on the Shulhan Arukh, conferring upon it a uniquely authoritative status. Menachem Wecker writes:

Karo, whose name is variously spelled in English, was born in Spain. Four years after his birth year, Spain expelled its Jewish population, and Karo’s family fled to Turkey. Some 34 years later, he moved to Israel, settling in Safed, the city associated with Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah.

Like other major Sephardi rabbis, Karo had his feet planted firmly in both Jewish ritual law—halakhah—and Kabbalah.

Karo’s work has been cited in multiple amicus curiae briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court. Edward Fram, a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev . . . told JNS that Karo’s work remains timely “due to his scholarship, which is not to be underestimated, but no less significantly, because his work became a springboard for further discussion of the law, much of it in the margins of the printed text.”

In a speech last Wednesday, Hizballah’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah not only declared that “nowhere will be safe” in Israel in the event of an all-out war, but also that his forces would attack the island nation of Cyprus. Hanin Ghaddar, Farzin Nadimi, and David Schenker observe that this is no idle threat, but one the Iran-backed terrorist group has “a range of options” for carrying out. They explain: 

Nasrallah’s threat to Cyprus was not random—the republic has long maintained close ties with Israel, much to Hizballah’s irritation. In recent years, the island has hosted multiple joint air-defense drills and annual special-forces exercises with Israel focused on potential threats from Hizballah and Iran.

Nasrallah’s threat should also be viewed in the context of wartime statements by Iran and its proxies about disrupting vital shipping lanes to Israel through the East Mediterranean.

This scenario should be particularly troubling to Washington given the large allied military presence in Cyprus, which includes a few thousand British troops, more than a hundred U.S. Air Force personnel, and a detachment of U-2 surveillance aircraft from the 1st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron.

Yoni Ben Menachem suggests there is an additional aspect to Nasrallah’s designs on Cyprus, involving a plan

to neutralize the Israeli air force through two primary actions: a surprise attack with precision missiles and UAVs on Israeli air-force bases and against radar and air-defense facilities, including paralyzing Ben-Gurion Airport.

Nasrallah’s goal is to ground Israeli aircraft to prevent them from conducting missions in Lebanon against mid- and long-range missile launchers. Nasrallah fears that Israel might preempt his planned attack by deploying its air force to Cypriot bases, a scenario the Israeli air force practiced with Cyprus during military exercises over the past year.